Not long ago, a Tuesday evening at The Factory at Franklin meant one thing: the parking lot was already empty. You could browse the antique stalls and handmade goods on a Saturday afternoon, grab a coffee, and be home before the shops turned their lights off. The building was a daytime stop, not a place you planned an evening around.
That is no longer true, and the shift didn't happen by accident. It happened because a developer, a theater company, and a chef with nearly seventeen years of history in the same building all made the same bet at roughly the same time: that Franklin residents wanted somewhere to be on a Tuesday night, not just a Saturday morning.
A Building That Used To Close When The Shops Did
The Factory's story starts in 1929, when the complex was built as the home of Dortch Stove Works and later became The Jamison Bedding Company. It sat through decades of industrial use before Calvin LeHew converted it into a shopping and event space in the 1990s. Ownership passed to Brad Kelley in 2012, and then, in 2021, to Holladay Properties, which is the group behind the renovation that's reshaped the building over the past several years.
Studio Tenn's artistic director Patrick Cassidy described the renovation as pairing a historic property being redone with new restaurants and retail alongside, in his words, "a professional theater in it." That last part matters more than it sounds. A shopping complex with good retail is still a daytime errand. A shopping complex with a professional theater, a full bar, and a returning chef with a following is something you drive to after dark.
The Weekly Schedule Nobody Used To Need
The clearest evidence of the shift isn't a single grand opening. It's the fact that The Factory now runs on a recurring weekly schedule, the kind of thing you only build once people are actually showing up on a Tuesday.
| Day | What's Happening | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | Trivia night | Skylight Bar |
| Wednesday | Wine Down Wednesday, half-price bottles, live bands on select nights | Skylight Bar |
| Saturday | Farmers market, 8 a.m. to noon | Outside the historic water tower |
None of these existed as standing weekly fixtures in The Factory's earlier decades as a shopping destination. A farmers market that runs every Saturday morning outside the water tower, paired with trivia and a discounted-wine night midweek, tells you the building is now built around a resident's actual calendar rather than a tourist's single visit.
A 329-Seat Theater Where There Used To Be Storage
The most permanent piece of this transformation sits inside what used to be called the Jamison Theater. Renamed the Turner Theater for major donor Cal Turner Jr., the space now seats 329 people and serves as the permanent home of Studio Tenn, Franklin's regional theater company. Getting there wasn't cheap for either side of the partnership. Studio Tenn itself launched a $3.5 million fundraising campaign just to cover its half of the joint venture with Holladay Properties.
That investment shows up in the calendar. Studio Tenn's 2026-27 season at the Turner Theater includes The Addams Family this fall and a run of It's a Wonderful Life from December 3 through 20, 2026. For a Franklin resident, that means the building now gives you a reason to show up on a cold Tuesday in December that has nothing to do with shopping at all.
Dinner Returns To Where It Started
The dining side of the story has its own full-circle moment. Saffire, the restaurant that gave chef Tom Morales his start in 2001 and closed in 2017, reopened at The Factory on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, a few doors down from its original spot. Morales put it simply when the reopening was announced: "It's exciting to go full circle, to start over where we began."
The new Saffire brought back its house-smoked prime rib and oyster bar, but it also added something the original space never had: live jazz on a patio next to the building's historic water tower, plus a 60-guest private dining room called the Blue Room for quarterly tasting events. A restaurant that closes at 9 is a dinner option. A restaurant with live music under a water tower and a piano is an evening plan.
A new boutique also joined the building's retail row recently, opened by two longtime Middle Tennessee friends and named for one of their mothers. It's a small addition next to the bigger changes, but it fits the same pattern: The Factory keeps adding reasons to stay past sundown rather than just reasons to stop by during the day.
What This Adds Up To If You Already Live Here
Downtown Main Street has always been Franklin's historic anchor, walkable and built around the square. The Factory used to play a supporting role to that, a weekend browsing spot a few blocks away that went dark early. What's changed is that the two no longer compete for the same hour of your day. Main Street still owns the daytime stroll and the antebellum charm. The Factory has built its own evening identity around a theater season, a returning chef, and a bar that runs trivia and half-price wine on a schedule you can actually plan around.
If you've lived in Franklin for a while, you probably remember when a trip to The Factory meant timing it before the shops closed. This fall, with Studio Tenn opening its new season and Saffire's jazz nights running under the water tower, that's no longer the constraint. The building finally has somewhere to be after dark, and Franklin residents were the ones who showed up enough to make that stick.
Franklin's neighborhoods keep evolving in ways that shape daily life long before they ever show up in a listing description. If you're curious what a specific block, school zone, or corner of Williamson County actually feels like day to day, Sarah Nicodemus Group knows this market from the ground up. Reach out anytime to book a free consultation and talk through what a move here could really look like.