• Joe Collins, 50, attorney, incumbent

• Verlin Curtis, 69, owner of Curtis TV and Radio Shack

Town board, pick three

• Jerry Evans, 50, manager of Terminex

• Edwin Hall, 72, retired from NP&L accounting department, incumbent

• Billy Mashburn, 53, paralegal, incumbent

• Sissy Pattillo, 65, retired school counselor

• Jim Williamson, 72, retired town administrator, incumbent

• Tom Woodlee,75, retired from General Motors finance division

Franklin is the largest town in Western North Carolina’s fastest-growing county, and and candidates in the Nov. 8 town board race are weighing development issues and their ability to preserve the town’s Main Street character.

Smart growth has been a hot topic countywide the past two years since Mayor Joe Collins, 50, an attorney, was elected. Its principals of mixed use development — light commercial and residential — are finding a home in the town’s planning goals, with the recently purchased Whitmire property providing a potential model site, Collins said.

“It would be just an ideal situation to start from scratch and have a planned village,” he said.

The Whitmire property, approximately 13 acres located about a half mile outside downtown proper, was purchased for $1.6 million earlier this year with the intent of the town relocating its town hall and building a joint fire department and police station. Selection of the site has emerged as an election issue as some candidates have spoken out against the town board’s unanimous vote to purchase the property, saying that town hall should stay downtown.

The idea of smart growth-based, mixed-use development on the Whitmire site is something mayoral challenger Verlin Curtis does not support.

“I don’t agree with that concept at the present time,” Curtis said.

Rather in order to balance the town’s industrial, commercial and residential needs, more of an emphasis should be placed on the downtown district and bringing merchants into buildings that are already vacant, rather than creating new buildings, said Curtis, 69, owner of Curtis TV and Radio Shak.

For example, Curtis cited the old Furniture Mart building on Main Street, which was recently renovated and made to house about 50 Drake employees. Such projects help local and small businesses while contributing to the effort to maintain a working downtown, Curtis said.

The town can help facilitate businesses making use of the town’s old buildings — which lends a certain historical charm to the Main Street landscape — through financial incentives to property and business owners, Collins said. “A lot of the buildings are just very old and it’s going to take some use of tax credits and other incentives to get it done,” he said.

Town merchants have begun a push to reinvigorate downtown through the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street revitalization program — the same program that helped turn around downtown Waynesville over the course of the past 20 years, said alderman Billy Mashburn, 53, a paralegal and an incumbent alderman serving for the past 15 years. The program focuses on four tenets of revitalization: organization, promotion, design and economic restructuring.

Organization involves getting everyone working toward the same goal and bringing together the appropriate human and financial resources to implement a Main Street revitalization program. Promotion sells a positive image of the commercial district and encourages consumers and investors to live, work, shop, play and invest in the Main Street district. Design means getting Main Street into top physical shape by capitalizing on historic buildings and pedestrian-oriented streets and creating an inviting atmosphere through window displays, parking areas, building improvements, street furniture, signs, sidewalks, street lights, and landscaping. Economic restructuring strengthens a community’s existing economic assets while expanding and diversifying its economic base.

The Main Street program helps sharpen the competitiveness of existing business owners and recruits compatible new businesses and new economic uses to build a commercial district that responds to today’s consumers’ needs.

Franklin was once a part of the Main Street program but funding shortages led to it being abandoned, Mashburn said. Now it is part of the town’s responsibility to support the revitalization effort.

“We want to keep the downtown as vibrant as possible,” Mashburn said.

Economic restructuring, however, must cater to the town’s aging and financially well-off residents rather than just looking to balance commercial, residential and industrial needs, said candidate Jerry Evans, 50, manager of Terminex.

“Sadly to say the town is not headed that way, it’s going to be retirement and tourism,” Evans aid.

The town’s offerings should be more service-oriented with medical expansion, housing and assisted living arrangements, Evans said. However, housing by virtue of mixed-use development on Main Street — such as apartment homes on the second floors of downtown businesses — is not something Evans supports.

“I’d like to keep Main Street Franklin more like it is now,” he said.

Mixed-used development is gaining ground in that the town has implemented its first mixed-use zoning classification along Georgia Road near Franklin High School and has plans to look at re-zoning land on Wayah Street and Harrison Avenue for mixed-use development.

“The area where I live has just changed to mixed use,” said candidate Sissy Pattillo. “With the correct planning that can be most beneficial to our area.”

Pattillo, 65, and a retired school counselor, said that as the town continues to grow, the local economy will most likely attract less traditional industry and more specialized and service-related jobs.

“Personally, I really see probably the small businesses and the high-tech industry, I don’t see the major, major industries here in Macon County,” Patillo said. “We are a tourist area whether we like it or not.”

Ensuring that downtown remains a vital part of the community will require long-term planning and keeping town hall in a central location, Patillo said.

“I am definitely for the town offices staying downtown,” she said. Patillo supports moving town offices to the Burrell Building, which often serves as the town’s festival hub, and developing Whitmire property as a mixed-used community without town hall as an anchor.

“The Whitmire property is a most valuable piece of property, so we really need to take our time in developing that,” she said.

Alderman Edwin Hall, 72, a retired accountant from NP&L who was appointed to the town board to fill Collins’ seat upon his election as mayor two years ago, agreed with the concept of mixed-use development on the Whitmire tract.

“As far as the property would be, I could see that working,” Hall said.

Hall said that he sees the town’s small business community as the greatest source of potential economic expansion, but that he also saw a need for something that would bring residents downtown on evenings and weekends.

“I wish I knew how to get people in town,” Hall said. “I drove through last night (Saturday) before dark and there were maybe three or four automobiles on Main Street.”

Candidates including Hall, Collins, and Evans have cited a civic center — something that could bring in conferences as well as host local events such as high school graduations and proms — as something that could reinvigorate the town.

However, Jim Williamson, 72, Franklin’s retired town administrator and an incumbent alderman of eight years, cautioned that a civic center should not fall solely on the shoulders of town leadership.

“I think it would be good for the town, but it would also be good for Macon County,” Williamson said. “Some are saying the town needs to build a civic center and we folks in the town of Franklin pay county taxes, too.”

“These folks that are talking about a civic center, I wonder if they would check into how much one would cost,” Williamson said.

Williamson also cited the cost of the Whitmire property in saying that he supported its purchase, but would not necessarily support the site’s development as a mixed-use community.

Candidate Tom Woodlee, 75, also could not be reached for comment. He is retired from the General Motors finance division. He served as alderman for four years, mayor for two and then two years as alderman again until 2001.

Woodlee ran in 2003 but was defeated, coming in as the race’s fourth highest vote getter. When Collins’ alderman seat was vacated by his election as mayor, Woodlee was considered as a possible replacement.