The existing schools (Ortenbergschule, Edertalschule, Burgwaldschule) were expanded into modern schools and in Wermersdorf, the Wigand-Gerstenberg-Schule (named after the chronicler) was newly built. The district vocational school, which had been housed in the barracks at the sporting ground on the Eder since 1950, was newly built in the early 1960s on Marburger Straße and expanded into an effective vocational education centre with a vocational technical school and upper school for engineering. Near Geismarer Straße, the Friedrich-Trost-Schule (school for students with learning disabilities) was built. From it grew in the early 1980s the Kegelberg-Schule (school for educables). Late in the 1970s, there came into being on the Kegelberg a workshop for those with disabilities and an integrative kindergarten sponsored by the Lebenshilfe-Werk ("Assisted Daily Living Works") On the floodplain in the 1960s an industrial park opened up – and has been expanded – in which a few sizeable new businesses have been able to establish themselves, strengthening Frankenberg's economic power and improving its economic structure. Also built on the floodplain was a new emergency management centre that houses all institutions involved in protection against catastrophes, such as the fire brigade – local and from farther afield – emergency management, Technisches Hilfswerk and the German Red Cross. In 1967 a new indoor swimming pool was built right near the parklands on Teichweg and in 1972, an outdoor swimming pool with a miniature golf course was built onto it. As part of municipal reforms in 1970 and 1971, 12 villages voluntarily joined the town of Frankenberg, thereby enlarging the town's municipal area from 2 736 ha to 12 518 ha and increasing the population from 9,397 to 15,263. In 1974, owing to the realignment of municipalities in Hesse, Frankenberg, which had been a district seat, had to give this status up to Korbach; on 1 January 1974, Korbach became the district seat of the new district of Waldeck-Frankenberg, created through a merger of the former districts of Frankenberg and Waldeck. The postal service built a new post office in the 1970s on Sudetenstraße and a telecommunications office on Marburger Straße with a transmission tower, whose height rivalled the Liebfrauenkirche tower's. The Ederberglandhalle, finished in time for the Hessentag (yearly state fair and festival in Hesse, held in a different town every year) in 1989, is today the hub of the town's cultural life. The greatest influence on Frankenberg's development came from the town