FRANKLIN
On Monday, Franklin’s City Council will consider a request by Franklin Summit LLC to remove a proffer that prohibits houses in the development from being used as rental properties, with some exceptions for military and temporary transfers.

The proffer was first adopted in 2005 as a condition the developer, Robert T. Williams, needed to meet in order for the city to approve the rezoning of the land.

At the time the proffer was adopted, the City Council had taken a position not to support new rental housing. That’s according to a memorandum from the city’s director of Community Development, Donald Goodwin, to City Manager R. Randy Martin.

However, during a joint meeting between the members of council and the city’s Planning Commission last Tuesday, both bodies indicated that the city’s demographics had changed, and that there was now a need to allow a mix of housing types and affordability in order to meet the demands of the city’s workforce, millennials and its senior citizens. It was the consensus at this meeting, according to Goodwin, that the proffer should be removed.

“This proffer has been a major deterrent to date for development of this project,” Williams said in a letter to Martin.

Construction of the development, located off of College Drive, began in February 2009 and the first of 25 planned condominium buildings was completed in the fall of that year.