Empty for years, a north Fresno grocery gets a new renter. Who is it? Why the delay?

Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.

Read our AI Policy.

• Mulligan’s Sports Bar & Indoor Golf will take over the former Lassens, Bentley’s site.
• The RiverView Shopping Center space had sat empty for seven years before leasing.
• Mulligan’s expects to open the North Fresno location in January or February.

After seven years of sitting empty, the former Lassens Natural Foods & Vitamins and Bentley’s Fresh Market in North Fresno finally has a new renter.

But it’s not another grocery store — and there’s a reason for that.

Mulligan’s Sports Bar & Indoor Golf is taking over the spot at the RiverView Shopping Center at Friant and Fort Washington Roads.

It’s a bar and restaurant with golf simulators that has an existing location on Visalia’s Main Street. It’s expected to open in January or February.

It’s planned to have eight golf simulators where customers can swing a club in front of large screens showing all kinds of golf courses.

Also planned is a 40-person wrap-around bar with 16 taps. It will serve cocktails and specialize in whiskey.

Though it will have a sports bar-style menu, you can order full dinners, including pizza, smashburgers, pulled pork sandwiches, and perhaps steak, said Shane Moss, the managing owner, who is opening the location with business partner Scott Wright.

“You don’t have to golf to even come in,” he said, adding that some people try their hand at a game for the first time, while others just come to eat or drink.

Why not a grocery store?

Longtime Fresnans may remember this space, which from 2006 to 2009 was home to locally owned Bentley’s Fresh Market and Bentley’s Bistro.

The Southern California-based Lassens opened a high-end grocery store there with prepared food in 2011. It closed sometime around January of 2020.

It’s been empty ever since.

Despite growing housing in Copper River Ranch and nearby, the area has few grocery stores.

The previous owner tried to get a grocery store in the 12,000-square-foot space, said Terri Giovacchini, a commercial real estate broker with Cushman & Wakefield who represented the property in lease negotiations.

Though the spot made sense for a specialty grocery store like the high-end locations that were previously there, regular grocery stores such as Save Mart want their stores to be completely surrounded by residential homes full of potential customers, she said. RiverView was only half surrounded by housing, with Woodward Park and the San Joaquin River to the north, across Friant Road.

“There’s no housing across the street,” she said. “So every grocery store ... they needed to be surrounded 360 (by a) neighborhood.”

The shopping center owner (which also owned several other properties in California) later filed for bankruptcy. A new owner purchased RiverView for $21 million, according to a report from Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services.

New ownership paved the way for a new type of tenant to move in.

Moss, of Mulligan’s, said they were drawn to the area because there are plenty of golfers on that side of town. They also don’t rely on the foot traffic from people passing by for business, he said.

“We’re a destination,” he said. "We’re not retail where you’re walking around and you’re like, ‘Hey, I want to stop in that clothing store.”