It's the first Kentucky city you come to traveling north on I-65.

Franklin, the seat of Simpson County is just 45 miles from Nashville.

And quickly growing.

What remains the same, however, is the southern charm of downtown, home to retail and restaurants.

Our Laura Rogers gives us a look and this installment of our series on Kentucky Towns.

My Days on Main Street.

From race horses to bourbon.

Franklin is big on Kentucky heritage.

The location is paramount because we sit on I-65 between Nashville and Bowling Green, and we have so many travelers that travel I-65 every day, and many of them stop at the Franklin exit, drawn to attractions like Kentucky Downs and Dueling Grounds Distillery.

People want to see horses when they come to Kentucky.

People want to see bourbon.

Those are the two things they usually mainly think of.

So we have both of those here.

It's also the home of professional golfer Kenny Perry, who owns a golf course in Franklin.

Kenny has brought a lot of notoriety to Kentucky and especially to Franklin.

He's just a good person.

And that is really important, I think.

And he kind of exudes that small town family charm that we have here in Franklin.

Amy Ellis is executive director of the Simpson County Tourism Commission.

Before that, she spent several years at the helm of Franklin Simpson renaissance, which evolved out of the main Street program.

Our main street is essentially 31 W so our main street runs from the north end to the south end, well, actually to the state line here in Franklin.

But our heart of our main street is our downtown.

Each year we try to do a new project.

Kim Roberts now leads.

Franklin Simpson Renaissance.

Franklin is a growing town.

She and Amy Ellis often collaborate to support downtown revitalization.

We work really close with the merchants to try to help their businesses grow, bring new businesses, and but a part of Rene's eye as a part of my job is keeping the downtown pretty, you know, through beautification.

Nearly a decade ago, efforts ramped up to save historic buildings on the square.

Local investors renovating those buildings to bring new life and new commerce to Main Street.

Total renovation pulled the bricks off the building brick by brick, clean them and put them back on the building.

That led to the sale of more historic properties.

So we've sold about 12 buildings downtown and have seen major renovations in those 12 buildings in the last ten years.

Opening a small business does carry financial risk, and much of their focus remains on supporting downtown merchants.

It's hard.

It's hard for new businesses in a small town.

They have to have that ability to hang on through some pretty hard times before they reach that goal of having regular customers.

That would become the idea behind the mustard seed market.

Let me just tell you the story.

Mustard seed market actually came about from a conversation that my mom and I had had.

Tammy Keri and Amy Ellis had traveled to other cities similar to the size of Franklin to see what they were doing to get people downtown.

When we walked in the front doors, I just looked at Amy and I said, This is the coolest place I've ever been in that business.

And Gallatin, Tennessee, would become the inspiration for mustard seed market.

I just made the comment.

I said, I wish we had something like that in Franklin.

And Mom looked at me and she said, Well, let's open one.

Eight years ago they did, providing vendor space for small businesses, not quite ready to invest or move full time to their own shop.

And I feel like it just gives small businesses the opportunity to really start out to kind of figure out the business and then hopefully be able to grow into their own storefront.

Carrie says she saw a major push to shop local and small during the pandemic.

When 2021, we saw an upsurge in sales and we're doing great and we've kind of plateaued after that to draw more foot traffic.

Franklin Simpson Renaissance hosts downtown events, including summer concerts that draw thousands of people to the historic district.

We have some really good bands.

We're getting bigger every year.

Even though we're small, we're big, small town with big hearts.

But we're always known for we can make big things happen in this town.

And the reason being because we have a lot of dedicated, true Franklin people that love our town.

We all love our town.

We want to see it grow.

We want to see all of our businesses succeed.

It all comes together to create an atmosphere that keeps both local and tourists coming back.

I don't know that if we hadn't flipped our downtown over and made it a little bit more accessible to people and more inviting to people that maybe we wouldn't had that success.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you, Laura, as always.

Kim Roberts says they're already planning for Christmas with a big project planned that they'll announce soon.

There are also grant opportunities for building owners to do renovations and improvements with a historic preservation ordinance to give them guidelines.