The tight-knit community faces tragedy, and the future, by banding together
Jenny Edwards still tears up at the mention of the tragedy that hit the city of Franklin, Indiana last summer.
On June 6, five teenagers were swimming in the Big Blue River south of town near Edinburgh, Indiana, when the rushing water swept Sarah McLevish over the dam. The two boys who dove in to save her, Jason Moran and Michael Chadbourne, drowned.
Edwards, a lifelong Franklin resident, says the community rallied within hours, mobilizing to provide support and counseling to the grief-stricken residents. “That just truly amazed me – how fast the community came together,” she says. The hashtag #FranklinStrong became a rallying cry as the close-knit town drew even closer to support each other. Ribbons adorning the high school’s colors quickly dotted trees, signposts, doors and statues. “The whole city was sold out of blue and white ribbons,” Edwards recalls. “We were having to go out of town to find more.”
Edwards’ oldest son, Cole, played on the Franklin Community High School football team with Moran and Chadbourne, who were memorialized in a moving senior day tribute on Aug. 29, where their parents were presented with framed jerseys. “My son still gets choked up about it,” she says. “It’s going to be strong in their hearts for a long time.”
Months after the tragedy of two drowned teenagers, ribbons throughout town still serve as a lasting memory. (Photo by Hugh Vandivier)
Tribulation
Except for college, Edwards has lived her entire life in Franklin, a city just 20 miles south of Indianapolis that has grown to more than 23,000. Once a private scrub nurse, she’s now a stay-at-home mom on the southside of town with two boys in high school and another in sixth grade. She and her husband, Jim, own Hovair Automotive, a material handling supply company on the city’s northside that proved useful during another tragedy that hit Franklin.
In June 2008, thunderstorms producing 11 inches of rain caused massive flooding of up to 6 feet to a 14-block area south of the Johnson County Courthouse. Edwards returned the next day from a trip to find the streets underwater. “I dropped my suitcase and went straight into town,” she says. On a mission to check on those affected, she entered the first house to find an elderly woman flooded up to her knees trying to salvage items from kitchen cabinets and dresser drawers.
“I realized that what people needed the most was dry boxes and food,” Edwards says. She found flats of boxes from her company, and each day she loaded them in her SUV and picked up large orders from fast food restaurants in town to distribute. At the time, the couple’s business had extra space, so the city asked them to store truckloads of items like bedding, pillows and toiletries to distribute to the families.
In 2008, flooding in Franklin damaged the new police center just south of downtown and inundated Johnson Memorial Hospital on the city's westside. (Photo courtesy of Michael Coy)
Renewal
The deluge claimed 68 homes in the flood plain south of Youngs Creek, which were demolished and replaced with a 12-acre Urban Forest. Also sprouting from that devastation, existing plans to revitalize the downtrodden downtown area suddenly took root.
“The timing of it just reinforced the need,” says Krista Linke, director of community development for the City of Franklin. City leaders began working though their redevelopment commission to add pavers to the streets on the east and west sides of the Courthouse. “We’re trying to take it back to the look of the original streets that were brick, but these are better engineered for traffic,” she says.
North of the square, workers poured and hand-tooled concrete sidewalks, ripped up and repaved Main Street and added customized metal benches and greenery. The city matched state funding to renew the façades of the historic buildings lining the main drag of Jefferson Street.
As buildings along Jefferson Street in Franklin undergo a facelift, some storefronts still remain empty. (Photo by Hugh Vandivier)
Slowly, a downtown mostly abandoned by shuttered family-owned businesses in the ’90s and resembling a decrepit de facto antique mall started attracting new businesses. Just a few years ago, The Hazelett building stood as an eyesore on the verge of collapse along the east side of the Courthouse square. Now, it houses Benjamin’s Coffeehouse, Gray Goat Sports bike shop and a new Court Street Café that’s moving in. Even the Daily Journal, Johnson County’s daily newspaper, moved its offices to the second floor from its longtime location north of town on U.S. 31. On the same block, nearby Franklin College opened 66 Water Street Arts Café, which provides students with an off-campus gathering spot to interact with the community.
“We’ve had so much [more] interest in downtown in the last year than I’ve ever seen,” Linke says. Still, with all the flurry of remodeling and refurbishment, vacancies remain. Don & Dona’s Restaurant, one of those small-town diners known for biscuits and gravy and rapid refills of coffee, closed a year ago with no new tenant yet. Linke cites the high asking prices by owners trying to recoup the money they’ve put into refurbishment. “Hopefully, we’ll find somebody who’s a right fit for them,” she says.
According to Linke, that right fit doesn’t involve chain retails stores or fast food restaurants, which dominate the north end of town. Her wish list includes a bakery or small grocery. Currently, work continues on a Depression-era government building that originally served as the post office and then city hall on Madison Street. Linke expects the Old Post Brewpub to open in the summer.
“Franklin College is deeply grateful to our many community partners who help provide countless opportunities for our students,” says president Jay Moseley (Photos by Eldon Lindsay)
A ‘marquee project’
On a small-town Saturday night, the rhythmic, flashing lights of The Historic Artcraft Theatre marquee beckon moviegoers with cartoons and old features, all sponsored by local residents and merchants. Built in 1922 as a vaudeville stage, the renovated 625-seat art deco theater has not just recovered from a doomed fate, it’s thriving.
When Franklin Heritage, the town’s historic preservation nonprofit, started leasing the venue in 2001, the venerable old theater had fallen into disrepair. “There were four or five toilets lined up on the stage,” recalls Rob Shilts, the group’s executive director. “I knew if we didn’t start by saving this theater, they’d have run us out of town. It’s been a marquee project for our other efforts around town,” he says with a smile.
The group bought the facility and has spent more than $1 million. According to Shilts, it still needs another $1.5 million in renovations, which includes a new heating and cooling system. The Artcraft shows films at least two weekends a month along with the occasional musical act on its 25-foot-by-35-foot stage. A cadre of volunteers sells tickets and concessions, performs skits before the movie and cleans the theater after each showing.
The jewel of downtown serves as a destination for Franklin, attracting moviegoers from across the state and the country. “Fifty percent of the people who come to movies there are from out of town,” says Linke, who’s also on the board of Franklin Heritage. “Through the Artcraft, a lot of downtown has been reenergized.
“Our ticket prices have not risen in a decade, and they’re not going to,” says Rob Shilts. The Artcraft charges $3 for children 12 and younger; $4 for students, military and seniors; and $5 for adults. (Photo by Eldon Lindsay)
At home downtown
A few blocks from The Artcraft, member Scott Brown, his wife, Cori, and their two boys, Cage and Aiden, live on Madison Street. They won the Angie’s List Old House Rehab Award in 2012 for the Italianate 136-year-old house they completely remodeled with about $400,000 and a year’s work. Scott runs A-rated Brown Remodeling Co. that specializes in old homes like theirs. He’s also worked on about six façades on commercial buildings downtown.
“I’ve never seen a town with more revitalization in such a short period of time anywhere,” he says, pointing to the availability of tax increment financing as the spark. “[The new administration] created some programs so that people could get low-interest loans and grants, and that’s what freed everything up.” The “domino effect” of revitalization has hit into the neighborhoods as well. “One neighbor fixes up their house, and it makes the neighbor across the street want to do it,” Brown says.
Scott and Cori Brown live in their restored home at 226 W. Madison St., Franklin, with their sons Gage, (left) and Aiden. (2012 Photo by Brandon Smith)
Just up a few doors down from the Browns, Angie’s List members Camilla and Jay Hoffman found Franklin as a place to settle down after they moved here in 1994. “Franklin’s a great secret,” comments Jay Hoffman. “Everyone thinks that we’re south of nowhere. Actually we’re within 25 minutes of anything in Indianapolis or Columbus culturally.”
When they would walk around their downtown neighborhood, they fell in love with a two-story home on Walnut Street that was built in 1929. According to Camilla, less than an hour after the real estate agent planted the For Sale sign in the front yard, a friend picked up a flyer and handed it to her during a chance meeting on the street. The Hoffmans snapped up the home. “We’ve talked about other houses since, but I’m going to die here,” he declares.
“We’ve been here two decades now,” he says, “and people have embraced us.” But, he admits they’re still considered newcomers to the long-established residents in Franklin. Still, the Hoffmans say they feel at home here, where they can horse trade for tomatoes at the Saturday Farmers’ Market or attend the many events that Discover Downtown Franklin hosts on the Courthouse square.
Angie's List member Camilla Hoffman relaxes in her remodeled kitchen. (Photo by Eldon Lindsay)
Jay is a lawyer with a short walk to his office in a rescued and restored building and carriage house on Jefferson Street. Camilla is just down the street from Northwood Elementary School where she’s a Title I assistant and literacy coach. One daughter, Gabrielle, is a sophomore at FCHS, and another, Sarah, attends sixth grade at Custer Baker Middle School.
While the couple sees the need for more sustainable business and fewer tanning salons, they single out the Franklin Family Aquatic Center, dog park, skate park, Blue Heron Disc Golf Course and the walking trails as amenities that add value to small-town living.
For the Hoffmans, most of that value lies in Franklin’s residents. When the tragedy at Big Blue River occurred, Jay Hoffman says he was with FCHS principal Doug Harter. “Within two hours of them finding out about it, they already had grief counseling in place,” he says. “It brought a lot of hope. The community is still grieving, but it brought us closer together. As horrible as it is, it’s good to see people bond and get stronger.”
Editor's Note: This story was updated on January 7, 2015.
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