Introduction
The Town of Franklin embraces a distinctive blend of developed land, open spaces, and recreational opportunities. The town places a high value on outdoor activities and conservation efforts to maintain this delicate balance between development and open space preservation. While suburban sprawl remains an ongoing challenge, Franklin has recently implemented measures to conserve and safeguard its natural landscape. Open Space and Recreation will continue to be a town priority.
Existing Conditions and Trends
Over the past few decades, various initiatives have worked towards preserving Franklin’s open space. The effort began in 1985 when the Franklin Conservation Commission created the first individual open space and recreation plan. Since then, efforts have been progressively concentrated on conserving and safeguarding the town’s natural environment, with the inclusion of additional open space and recreational parcels. Currently, the town has over 5,000 acres of both public and private open space and recreation areas, including:
● 1,000+ acres of Town-owned permanently protected conservation land.
● 1,000+ acres of permanently protected recreational land.
● 400+ acres of permanently protected public open space.
● 600+ acres of private recreational land.
LEVEL OF PROTECTION
The Town of Franklin currently has 3,136 acres of land classified as protected open space and recreation.107 Eighty-four percent of that land is protected in perpetuity. The remaining 16 percent of open space parcels have limited, unknown, or no protection. The 134.7 acres (9 parcels) that have limited protection include St. Mary’s Cemetery, Brick School House, Fletcher Field, Davis Thayer School, Old Town Pool Site, Tri-County Vocational High School fields, Horace Mann Middle School fields, Theron Metcalf Field, JFK Elementary School, Parmenter School, and King Street Memorial Park.
The two parcels (9.2 acres) that have unknown protection comprise the Harborwood Playground, owned by the Harborwood Association. The nine parcels (357.6 acres) that have no protection include Camp Haiastan, the Franklin Rod and Gun Club, Franklin Country Club, and Maplegate Country Club. Parcels that fall into this category are privately owned lands that are 10 acres or more and contain no structures. Table 8.1 lists the protected open space and recreation by level of protection and Map 8.1 illustrates the level of protection throughout the town.
OWNERSHIP
As previously stated, there are several different owners of protected open space and recreation within Franklin. There is a total of 3,136 acres of protected space, and the respective owners with the total number of acres owned are displayed in Table 8.2. Map 8.2 illustrates protected open space and recreation by ownership.
PRIMARY PURPOSE
The majority of open space and recreation land in Franklin has the primary purpose of conservation and recreation, totaling 2,243 acres or 71.5 percent of total open space. Table 8.3 contains a list of protected open space and recreation parcels by primary purpose. Five parcels (125.1 acres) are for agriculture, 18 (122.5 acres) are for flood control, two parcels (22.6 acres) are historical/cultural, and 18 parcels (178.0 acres) are for water supply. An additional 11 parcels (444.8 acres) are categorized as “other” for the primary purpose.
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