Franklin by the Numbers

Franklin residents hold a median net worth of $548,475. They carry $1.54 billion in annual disposable income. Median household income sits at $115,357. These are not people unfamiliar with the concept that investment produces returns.

Yet the civic conversation about Franklin's economic future is disproportionately shaped by a narrow slice of participation. The residents who attend city council meetings, comment on zoning proposals, and show up at public hearings are a small fraction of the population. The broader constituency of forward-thinking residents, young professionals, growing families, and business-minded homeowners who understand that strategic commercial development strengthens a community are largely absent from the discussion.

Every suburb that has successfully built a commercial tax base followed the same pattern: early investments create momentum, and momentum attracts more investment. Oak Creek's trajectory demonstrates this clearly. Its first wave of commercial projects made the next wave easier to attract. Retailers follow rooftops. Employers follow infrastructure. Restaurants and services follow employers. Each building block makes the next one more likely.

Franklin has the building blocks in place. A 520-acre corporate park with new interstate access. Yaskawa committing $180 million and 700 jobs. Costco in planning. More than 1.1 million square feet of industrial space added since 2019. These are not isolated events. They are the early stages of a compounding cycle. The question is whether Franklin accelerates it or lets it stall.

Franklin's population is growing at 1.15% annually, faster than any neighboring community. The people choosing Franklin are not choosing stagnation. They are choosing a community with room to grow, strong schools, and economic potential. They are the kind of residents who understand that a well-planned commercial district lowers their property taxes, that a thriving business corridor creates local jobs, and that smart growth is how suburbs evolve into places worth staying in for the next generation.

This is the constituency that Franklin 2040 exists for. Informed residents who believe the city's best years can be ahead of it, and who want the data to prove it. Share these facts. Start the conversation. The numbers are on Franklin's side. The only missing ingredient is civic will.

76% of Franklin's tax base is residential. That is not a neutral statistic. It means that when a road needs repaving, when the fire department needs a new engine, when the parks budget increases, three-quarters of the cost falls on homeowners. Communities with more balanced tax bases spread that cost across commercial and industrial properties. In Brookfield, commercial properties carry a significantly larger share. In Oak Creek, every new warehouse and retail center that opens reduces the per-household tax burden.

Franklin residents who oppose commercial development are, in effect, voting to keep their own property taxes higher than they need to be. That is a choice they are free to make. But it should be an informed choice, made with the data in front of them, not a reflexive one made without understanding the fiscal math.

Franklin households generate $535 million per year in retail and food service spending. That money is going somewhere. When Franklin lacks the restaurants, the shopping, the entertainment, and the services that its own residents demand, those dollars flow to Oak Creek, Greenfield, Brookfield, and beyond. Economists call this retail leakage. In plain terms: Franklin residents are funding other cities' tax bases with their spending.

Every time a Franklin family drives to another community for dinner, for groceries at a store that does not exist in Franklin, or for weekend shopping, they are sending tax revenue and economic activity elsewhere. This is not a criticism of those families. It is a criticism of the gap between what Franklin's demographics can support and what the city has built.

Across the country, the suburbs that are thriving are the ones that have evolved beyond bedroom-community status. They have invested in walkable commercial districts, mixed-use centers, local employment corridors, and public spaces that give residents a reason to stay and spend locally. The suburbs that remain purely residential are watching their younger residents leave for communities that offer more.

Franklin's growth rate of 1.15% says that people are choosing this city. But choice is a two-way street. The families moving in today will evaluate in five years whether Franklin kept its promise of being a place that is building toward something. If the answer is no, they will be the next generation of residents who leave for a community that took its future seriously. That is the real cost of inaction, and it does not show up on any spreadsheet.

Tax Increment Financing is one of the most misunderstood tools in local government. Critics frame it as a giveaway. The reality: TIF captures future tax revenue that would not exist without the development. The base value stays the same. Only the increment — the new value created by the project — is redirected to pay for the infrastructure that made it possible.

When a TIF district closes, all that new value flows into the general tax base permanently. Franklin’s existing TIF districts have a track record of creating real assessed value. Poths General: $15 million TIF investment projected to generate $17 million in new property tax revenue. That is not a cost to taxpayers. That is an investment with a positive return.

Franklin has 1,165 people per square mile. Oak Creek has 2,081. Brookfield has 1,855. New Berlin has 1,400. Franklin is the least dense suburb in its own comparison set. Nobody is proposing Manhattan. The question is whether Franklin can support the population density that makes a Costco viable, that keeps a restaurant corridor alive, that justifies the commercial development residents say they want.

Every national retailer and restaurant chain runs a density model before they build. If Franklin’s density stays flat, those models will keep pointing to Oak Creek, to Brookfield, to anywhere but here. Strategic residential development is not the opposite of preserving Franklin’s character. It is the precondition for the commercial growth that protects it.

When Franklin residents leave for work in the morning, the city’s effective population drops. That matters because daytime population drives the local service economy: the lunch spots, the gas stations, the dry cleaners, the coffee shops. Businesses that depend on weekday foot traffic cannot survive in a city that empties out from 8 to 5.

This is why every major employer locating in Franklin changes the equation. Yaskawa’s 700 workers, Saputo’s 600, Modine’s 300+, Krones adding 150 — these are not just manufacturing jobs. They are 1,750+ people who will eat lunch in Franklin, buy gas in Franklin, and use services in Franklin five days a week. That daytime demand is what makes a restaurant district viable and a retail corridor sustainable.

Consider what Franklin has right now that it did not have five years ago: a new I-94 interchange providing direct freeway access to 520 acres of developable land. Yaskawa committing $180 million and its North American headquarters. Costco selecting Franklin over every other Milwaukee County city. Modine investing $100 million in data center manufacturing. A completely rewritten Unified Development Ordinance — the first update since 1998.

These conditions do not last. Capital moves. Developers have options. The companies and retailers evaluating Franklin right now are also evaluating Oak Creek, Waukesha County, and Racine County. Every month of delay, every project that gets bogged down in opposition, every signal that Franklin is not ready for investment shifts the calculus toward a competitor. The foundation has been built. The question is whether Franklin builds on it while the window is open.