Contrast Halloween on Franklin Street and Halloween in downtown Carrboro. On Franklin Street, cars are cleared from the street to make room for a 20,000-plus bacchanalia of drinking and adults in costumes like Two Men Walking a Breast. In downtown Carrboro on the Town Commons next to the Town Hall, community volunteers organize a yearly Halloween Carnival of games and activities for children. Families walk from nearby neighborhoods and apartment complexes. A few nights earlier Weaver Street Market hosts a Halloween celebration with music, a costume contest, a storyteller and a puppet parade.

Now explain to me why so many have jumped to the conclusion that Kidzu belongs on Franklin Street. No doubt it serves Chapel Hill and Franklin Street to have a great place like Kidzu bringing folks downtown, but how does it serve Kidzu? What support is there for Kidzu on Franklin Street? Are there parks nearby? Are there family-focused activities regularly hosted by the town and local businesses?

In a downtown Carrboro location, Kidzu could partner with Carrboro Parks and Recreation, centrally located downtown, with the ArtsCenter, centrally located downtown, with DSI, the theater company centrally located downtown and with Weaver Street Market, centrally located downtown and hosting family-friendly events every week all spring and summer.

There is an elementary school centrally located in Carrboro, one of the most economically and ethnically diverse in our school district, and the new location of a preschool program. Local school children could walk on field trips to Kidzu or attend after school activities. The McMasters Street school would also be fairly close as is Carr Court.

Weekends on Franklin Street are often dominated by sporting events that bring thousands and thousands of people into town and cause major traffic and parking problems all through the center of town and the bypass. Locals avoid that area like the plague on those weekends and sneak around the back ways when moving from west to east or east to west. How does it serve working parents to force them to battle those crowds to visit Kidzu on the days they don't work?

Kidzu is a wonderful place that would do well anywhere, but it would thrive in Carrboro and could offer so much more to both communities -- Chapel Hill and Carrboro -- without the burden of the collegiate claim on Franklin Street. Kidzu should be focused on the best location to serve families: downtown Carrboro.