The prospect of a state of the art cultural center is exciting indeed, and everyone involved should be congratulated for getting a plan in motion. Its location, unfortunately, points up one of the biggest problems suburbs face: off-plan development that creates even more sprawl, resultant of earlier bad choices.
There is a region called the Franklin City Center, which is contained in the blue border below. Most (if not all) of the city's municipal buildings reside there.
Note the choices made when these buildings were constructed: They're sprawled apart from one another with no relationship to each other. They're parceled out with no apparent concern for the amount of land being eaten up.
Especially appalling is the "Franklin Law Enforcement Center" island. I've heard off-the-record anecdotal accounts from city officials of how it came to be such a behemoth; the "force of personality" of a former chief of police, evidently, made certain that logic was ignored and it was made a free-standing structure with an ocean of parking around it rather than part of the City Hall building, which would have made perfect sense. Also, I defy anyone to show me a time when that parking lot is close to completely full (besides public meetings on sex offenders and zoning changes, which occur infrequently enough that the city hall/police station combination would have been a perfect solution in terms of parking.)
The result of this random seeding of buildings? The Franklin Cultural Arts Center, despite attempting to do so (I hear), could not get a grant of land from the city in the "Franklin City Center" because the remaining open slots are unfeasible. We have a lot of lawn going on in that region ...
So the developers of Fountains of Franklin have, to their credit, stepped up and provided space for the cultural arts center. But look at its location in relationship to the "city center."
I indicate the quarry above because it's important to note that symmetrical development across the street (south) from Fountains of Franklin is going to be constrained by that land feature. The south-east corner of that Rawson-51st intersection is residential, so nothing can take root there. Still, there's every chance that Fountains of Franklin will greatly enhance the subdivisions to the north.
Count me as a supporter of the Franklin Cultural Arts Center, but color me disappointed with the ongoing randomness of development in Franklin.
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