Traditional Neighborhoods and Secluded Gated Developments in the Mountains of Western North Carolina

The charming town of Franklin, NC is centrally located where the three corners of Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina meet. Surrounded by the beautiful Smoky Mountains and just 120 miles from Atlanta, 66 miles from Gatlinburg and 68 miles from Asheville, Franklin offers easy access to numerous winter and summer activities, fine shopping and dining, Harrah's casino and much more.

Enjoy arts displays and cultural events both in Franklin and area towns including the beautiful Performing Arts Center in Western Carolina University.

Come and experience the healthy, active, enjoyable lifestyle that Franklin and its surrounding areas have to offer.

You can learn more about our beautiful community at http://www.mytownfranklin.com/

When we love where we live, connected to our friends and close to places we enjoy, why can’t we live there comfortably for the rest of our lives?

I’ve been thinking about that over the past week or so, perhaps because I’m getting calls from people who are excited by plans for our Sanctuary Village, an in-town neighborhood in Franklin, NC.

We held a public “charrette,” an intense design workshop, in mid-July, where my development team huddled with citizens and Franklin officials about the design of the Village on 23 acres a few blocks north of Franklin’s historic Main Street. Coming out of the charrette, we were all excited. We have this wonderful opportunity to introduce a variety of housing types on the property and still preserve some 40 percent of the land in open space. This will be a real neighborhood of the old-fashioned type, where residents will feel comfortable walking to visit neighbors and to shop in town. And the architectural models produced by architect Bill Allison and his team garnered plenty of wows. These are homes, people told me over and over, where just about everybody will want to live.

The question that kept coming back, though, was the one I heard from prospective neighbors, especially those who are retired or are nearing retirement, who want to make sure they can stay in Sanctuary Village for the remainder of their lives. They want single-level living and what’s come to be called Universal Design – door entries, cabinetry, bath access, and other designed-in amenities that allow for easy movement for residents with a range of physical abilities. The fact is, I think we all want communities and homes we can enjoy growing old in.

That thought led me to this promise to myself as we move forward developing The Sanctuary Village: I’m going to do everything I can to make this neighborhood and these houses welcoming to folks of all ages.

We’ll take special care in making sure there are plenty of models that offer single-level living, including master bedrooms and baths on entry levels, even if we provide a second-story guest bedroom and bath. We think multigenerational living will be enhanced by many of our designs that allow for secondary dwellings, “granny flats” or garage apartments in the back of the main house. With options such as these, our homes can evolve with us as we age. A garage apartment can be a studio or a home office when we’re in that phase of our lives, including a second-career phase of retirement. Then they can become apartments for caregivers when we need extra help or rental apartments to supplement retirement incomes. That sort of flexibility allows us all to age comfortably “in place.”

Even more importantly, we’re designing The Sanctuary Village to make it easy to “age in community.” A walkable neighborhood, where travel by car is by choice instead of by necessity, is immediately senior friendly. The same goes for our location, close to the hospital and to recreation and shopping alternatives in town. And best of all, a design that delivers a real neighborhood makes for real neighbors, for the kinds of friends who’ll check in on us when they miss seeing us stroll by their houses or out sitting on our porches.

A good place is made better by the sense of community it fosters. It takes a village, not only to raise children we can be proud of, but also to age with dignity, safety, and comfort. The Sanctuary Village will be such a place.