Living in Franklin Place

Franklin Place is a recorded subdivision built around S Franklin Circle, a single cul-de-sac street in the Little Valley area of southeast St. George. The plat (the recorded map of the lots) was recorded in two phases, in 2006 and again in 2008. The "Place" in the name fits what it is on the ground: a short, self-contained street, not a sprawling development with its own entrance sign and shared amenities.

Little Valley itself is worth understanding before you judge any one street in it. The area started out as farm and horse country, laid out with room for horses and livestock and space between neighbors. It has filled in a lot since, but you can still see the old pattern in the lot sizes. Franklin Circle's homes sit on noticeably larger lots than St. George's tighter, newer subdivisions closer to the freeway.

Because it is one street, Franklin Place has no park or clubhouse of its own. Instead, Little Valley's public recreation fields and the rest of the area's amenities are a short drive away. The rest of the city is easy to reach without winding through a maze of side streets first.

Franklin Place is one circle of homes, not a large subdivision, so few homes are for sale here at any one time. That is simply the nature of a single street, and what the street does offer is size. Recorded homes on Franklin Circle run into the thousands of square feet, with several bedrooms and multiple bathrooms, on lots generally a quarter acre or larger. That is more than most St. George subdivisions built in the same years offer.

The build era matters here too. Phase 1 was recorded in 2006 and Phase 2 followed in 2008, so most homes date to the mid-to-late 2000s and into the 2010s. They tend to have larger, more custom-feeling floor plans than you see on today's tighter production lots.

With so few homes on the street, a single sale or listing can change the picture quickly. I would rather pull the recent sales and the homes for sale right now than quote a stale number here.

Franklin Place is in the Washington County School District. The district's boundary map puts Franklin Place in Crimson View Elementary (grades K-5). From there they go on to Desert Hills Intermediate (grades 6-7), Desert Hills Middle School (grades 8-9), and Desert Hills High School (grades 10-12).

Boundaries can shift as the southeast side of St. George continues to grow. For any home you are serious about, check the current school with the district itself, not a map. For outside school data, GreatSchools and Niche both publish numbers you can weigh yourself.

To understand Franklin Place, look past the street to the area around it. Little Valley grew up as farm and horse ground, laid out with room for horses and livestock and space between neighbors. Much of that has given way to homes over the past two decades. But the lots never shrank to match the rest of St. George's smaller lots, and some nearby parcels still allow horses.

Franklin Place is not a large horse estate, but it comes out of that history. Its quarter-acre-plus lots and larger, more custom-feeling homes show the same idea: more room between houses and more room around each one. That is quite different from the subdivisions filling in St. George's western and northern edges on smaller lots.

The catch is distance. Little Valley sits at the southeast edge of the city, closer to the airport than to downtown. If you are weighing Franklin Place against a more central St. George address, weigh the extra room against the extra drive.