Just five months after receiving a “Project of the Year” award from the New Hampshire chapter of the American Planners Association, Franklin’s whitewater park project has received the same award from the Northern New England chapter.
Executive Director of Mill City Park Marty Parichand, Franklin’s Mayor Tony Giunta, City Manager Judie Milner and others gathered at the Omni Mount Washington Hotel on Thursday night to accept the award on behalf of Mill City Park and the city of Franklin.
“During the reception, we were challenged to provide stories rather than acceptance speeches to illustrate part of the journey,” Parichand wrote in an email about the event. “This story is constantly evolving and growing, but it has as its foundation a story of outdoor recreation, community and forgotten or lost artifacts.”
Not much separates Franklin’s story from other mill towns or more accurately river towns, Parichand wrote.
“Their growth during the industrial age is well documented, as is, their demise. What isn’t well documented is their interpersonal or societal impacts. … Low self-worth, loss of community pride, home selection based on an individual’s economic status rather than a desire to live within that town, degradation of infrastructure and/or building stock. Eventually, this cascades into struggling city and school systems,” he wrote.
Parichand wrote that the collection of problems has made Mill City Park “a truly fascinating project.”
“It provides a brand, a reason to exist, a reason to have pride, a reason to love where you live,” he wrote. “Our project is tangible. It is filled with work products or features that we are building (a timber frame pavilion, a whitewater park, bike trails, etc.). However, as an organization it is the intangibles that make this a great project. Our community grows every day, many residents believe the direction we are going and contribute with hours of volunteering or monetary donations. They believe.”