On Saturday mornings, the sounds of residents sorting through fresh produce and handmade items fills the spot where a government office building had stood.
A few blocks away, children run along a trail through an urban forest in the middle of Franklin. At one time, dozens of families had lived on the land.
In Greenwood, a strip mall at a key commercial intersection is gone, and the creek nearby is being widened.
Residents of the Bluff Acres neighborhood in the Center Grove area have larger yards, but fewer neighbors, after homes were damaged so significantly that they had to be torn down.
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The flood of 2008 altered the landscape of Johnson County in visible ways, and more changes are coming.
Franklin is in the process of buying three downtown business properties in the flood plain along Youngs Creek and developing greenspace that can host even more festivals or concerts. The move will open up more property to catch water and prevent property damage, but will drastically change the look of the city in the southwest portion of downtown, near Monroe and Jackson streets.
In Greenwood, residents were rescued from homes on Bomar Lane during the flood of 2008, and now homes in the area are coming down to create a park space and prevent future damage. The city is pursuing a second federal flood buyout program.
In the immediate years after the flood, more than 100 homes were torn down through buyout programs initiated by Johnson County and Franklin.
Johnson County purchased 22 homes in the Bluff Acres neighborhood with federal dollars. Ten of those lots are leased to neighbors to extend their yards. Trees were planted on the other lots.
In Franklin, 62 homes near South Street, Hemphill Street, Dunn Street and Jackson Street were bulldozed. In the following years, volunteers, the city’s parks department and students from Franklin College planted thousands of trees to create an urban forest in the area. The effort has been led by Franklin resident Jim Crane, and volunteers gathered for likely the last time in 2017 for a mass planting.
Now, the initial trees that were planted are 6 to 7 feet tall and repopulating the forest on their own, and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 trees are growing. In 2016, the Johnson County Public Library opened a storywalk through the forest.
Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett notices the growth of the urban forest along South Street as a Franklin fixture now, but it still stands in contrast to a lifetime of memories.
“When I drive by, I visualize growing up with all those houses there,” he said.
He knows that it was the right decision, proven time and time again. Last summer, 6 inches of rain fell in one day in Franklin, and parts of the urban forest flooded. If the homes were still standing, they would have flooded again.
Projects under development today were set in motion 10 years ago, when the community experienced the damage from a 100-year flood and residents become more attuned to the importance of long-term planning to prevent it from happening again.
Earlier this year, a vacant strip mall on Madison Avenue at County Line Road in Greenwood was torn down, so the creek behind it can be widened to better move water and reduce flooding.
County offices moved out of the Oren Wright county government office building after it flooded, and the parking lot at Jefferson and Jackson streets is now used to host the Franklin Farmers Market
The city of Franklin had to abandon its city hall, which was the former post office, after it was damaged in the flood. While work has been ongoing in recent months, the building on West Madison Street mostly stood empty for nine years.
This week, new owners gave a sneak peak into the building’s new life as a restaurant that will open later this year.
