For years Franklin Street has been the heart of the UNC-Chapel Hill.  According to WRAL.com, events such as its annual Halloween bash have attracted more than 80, 000 people to the small town of Chapel Hill, which is much larger than the towns population size of 54,000.   

What is truly amazing about these numbers is that a percentage of the people who have decided to spend their Halloween on Franklin Street are students from our own University. Franklin Street comes to life after basketball events and on weekends with enthusiastic college students from around the globe.

This modest street has provided entertainment to students over from all across the state over the years. However, N.C. State no longer has the need to rely on Franklin Street for its entertainment purposes. With Hillsborough Street becoming the heart of Raleigh, students can finally bid Franklin Street a past due farewell.  

In search of entertainment, students often find themselves taking a 30 minute drive to Chapel Hill. In February of 2009, gas prices rose 10 percent since January, CNCB.com.

The rise of tuition, coupled with cell phone bills, student loans and credit card bills has left students with enough to worry about financially.  Keeping gas in their vehicles to make the constant insignificant drive to Chapel Hill should not be included in their to-do list. Taking advantage of the entertainment options that Raleigh has to offer is one way NCSU students can save on money and still have an electrifying time.  

With more than 30,000 students at NCSU and the city of Raleigh reporting to have a population of 380,173 Hillsborough Street can be turned in something that Franklin Street will never be.  

According to WRAL.com, “Hillsborough Street is more than 200 years old, built as a thoroughfare from the Capitol. And some dream of seeing it as a signature area of the city.”  

The efforts to revitalize Hillsborough Street began in 2006 and with the Hillsborough Hikes, Haunted Hillsborough Hike and the Hillsborough Street Renaissance, the University is demonstrating to the city of Raleigh and surrounding areas that the Hillsborough Street dream which was deferred did not “dry up like a raisin in the sun.” Students no longer have a reason to drive to Chapel Hill on the weekends for a mediocre time on a little street in diminutive lifeless town.  Hillsborough Street is not the new Franklin Street and will never aim to be so. Franklin Street has simply been the alternate for entertainment as Raleigh waited for the stimulating Wolfpack to bring Hillsborough Street back to life.