Daily Journal – The City of Franklin officially opened Yandes Street following a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning.
Under construction since August 2, 2022, the historical Yandes and Madison Street preservation project was embarked upon to refurbish the last remaining brick street in Franklin, an initiative residents had been adamant about maintaining.
“In 2017, one week after I became mayor, I started getting emails from residents that lived on Yandes Street saying ‘I hope you are not one of these mayors who think that they are going to blacktop our street,” Mayor Steve Barnett said. “We started planning this in 2017 and here we are six years later. We are also celebrating our bicentennial birthday, so I think it is fitting.”
Yandes Street is a little more than a half-mile long. The project also included the restoration of the brickwork on a block of Madison Street, relocating the utility lines from the street to the sidewalk area as well as installing new sidewalks and street lighting.
GAI Consultants told Barnett in 2017 that they committed to finding a solution that would grant the community’s wish to retain the street’s history.
“I made a commitment to replace the street with brick,” Scott Hornsby, vice president and business sector leader of GAI Consultants said. “I wasn’t going to pave it.”
