FRANKLIN
At Monday night’s meeting, the Franklin City Council voted unanimously to change the name of the Franklin Business Incubator to Franklin Business Center.

“There has been some concern that name of the incubator, incubator being implying new business and implying that they’re not stable,” Councilman Benny Burgess said.

President and CEO of Franklin-Southampton Economic Development Amanda Jarratt had sent an email to City Manager Randy Martin prior to the meeting regarding comments from clients about the potential name change for the incubator.

Some of the comments were:

• “FBI is a snappy abbreviation, but it does not have a positive vibe, who wants a call from the FBI?”

• “‘Business Incubator’ has meaning to those associated with economic development circles, but could be nebulous to others, as many in the public only associate incubators with eggs.”

• “There are some savvy customers that understand business incubators, but in general it leads to a discussion that moves from our product and services to our status.

Not that we hide the fact we are a startup, we just don’t want it to be the focus or highlighted unnecessarily. We have enough challenges as a startup already! The Franklin Business Center is a name that adds to our credibility and we would love to proudly provide when asked for directions or our mailing address.