Gelato love is keeping this Downtown Fresno corner alive

FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - A gelato store successful Downtown Fresno is not lone paying homage to Fresno, Italy, and a beloved household - but besides playing a portion successful reviving the country astatine Warnors Theatre connected Fulton Street and Tuolumne Street successful Downtown Fresno

Owner of BB's Gelateria Stacy Williams says the gelateria was connected the brink of closure earlier she took it implicit successful precocious 2024. She says her determination to instrumentality ownership of the store followed 1 of the darkest times successful her life.

"[It was] conscionable a truly unusual time," Williams said. "To suffer my grandma and my occupation successful October of 2024 - I was trying to scramble and fig retired what I was going to do."

Williams says she was sitting astatine location erstwhile she saw the gelateria's owners were putting the store up for sale.

"I messaged instantly and said, 'Oh my gosh, tin we spell down?'," Williams said.

Williams says she was enchanted by the shop's historical architecture and energy. She says she turned to her fiancé and said, "I deliberation we're going to bargain a gelateria."

Williams and her fiancé instantly began putting their idiosyncratic touches connected it.

"I abruptly got this astonishing feeling," Williams said. "This is our shop."

Williams says the gelateria serves arsenic a mode for her to clasp her Italian practice and wage homage to her ancestors who came to Fresno.

BB's Gelateria features pictures of Williams' household and her fiancé's family. The Gelateria besides pays homage to Fresno's past and Italian immigrants successful Fresno with peculiar flavors like, "Forestiere Limoncello."

"We besides person Audra, Vanilla Bean that we named aft Audra McDonald," Williams said. "We thought, 'How tin we take, like, the radical that person been successful Fresno and the past and warmth of that and past bring it successful present into our gelateria?'"

Williams says her extremity arsenic a concern proprietor is to invited visitors to Downtown Fresno with the aforesaid warmth arsenic neighboring businesses similar Sacred Heart Coffee, Maarte Fresno and others.

"I'm hoping that that's what radical consciousness erstwhile they travel into our Warnor's corner," Williams said. "Everybody successful this country is giving you that aforesaid benignant of lukewarm hug erstwhile you come."

BB's Gelateria is astatine 2017 Tuolumne Street; it is unfastened Tuesday done Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.