Don’t pick on Asheville. The town of Franklin, via its zoning ordinance which was scheduled to be adopted Monday, has just written a new verse to “Windmills of Your Mind.” The song, you may recall, began:
Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
Now, taking from the Smoky Mountain News:
We have what every developer
Is foaming at the mouth to get
It is not a one way street
By requiring a special use permit
It gives the town their bite of the apple
Most developers try to bully towns
By threatening not to come
It is usually a bluff
Now, when seeking a special use permit
The developer will have to attend a meeting
With surrounding property owners
The ordinance will improve the look
Every development will have to include sidewalks
Ten percent of a commercial lot must be open space
Dumpsters have to be screened
The average fast food joint
Would only have to plant
Two or three trees in its lot
And no trees along the front
We are going from nothing to something significant here
The appearance code will come later
The important thing
Is we are moving toward something
Building facades downtown
Must meet architectural and aesthetic guidelines
Buildings must be positioned in line
To create a unified street wall
And a row of street trees is required
You want to have a look
That everything is close and walkable
Everything is kind of cohesive
When the town leaders embarked on a visionary process
For the town and its future
The outcome was a set of guiding philosophies
To make Franklin a more attractive friendly atmosphere.
