Council hears 35-acre Scott Park sports-campus concept with 900 parking spaces

Chip Warner, Franklin's parks and aquatic director, presented a concept plan to expand Scott Park by acquiring and developing roughly 35 acres north of the current park. "The property that is north of it is 35 acres ... so it this park became 7 times bigger than it was," Warner said, describing a sports campus with seven youth baseball fields, one larger diamond for high-school/college play, two full-size soccer fields, 12 pickleball courts, three basketball courts, shelter houses, a playground, a splash pad and a maintenance building.

Warner emphasized parking relief as a core objective: the concept would provide about 900 parking spaces compared with roughly 120 today, and would relocate the park's main entrance to Commerce Drive to improve traffic flow via a proposed roundabout. He said the plan aims to connect the neighborhood to the Greenway Trail.

Engineers and council members asked about drainage, floodplain limitations and on-site detention. Charlie Maddox of Crossroads explained that the site sits largely in a flood plain and that the design uses an expanded "two-stage ditch" along Canary to provide detention volume on-site and achieve a net-zero increase in off-site runoff in a 100-year event. Maddox said the design is contained on site and has preliminary county support, with final numbers still pending.

Warner said the project remains in concept/scoping and will advance into detailed design and cost estimation; council asked about security, liability and programming, and Warner noted plans to explore cameras, lighting, lightning-warning systems and restricted access rules for turf fields.