a) Once you create a new blank project, it is on the Getting Started Window in the recent templates list (left side). You can pin it there so it is accessible permanently. This by itself makes it very accessible at the time you are most likely creating a new project -- when you have nothing else open.
b) As Altenbach noted, a new project is fairly rare compared to all the other reasons to go to the File menu.
c) We specifically want users to consider when they create a new project using an existing template rather than always reaching for blank projects. We believe the templates often save significant time. For that reason, we do not want to promote blank project.
This feature is useful for me in cases where I want to open isolated code (like code from the forums or previous versions from SCC) and don't want to go through the new project creation dialog. That's why I simply did it myself quite some time ago and here's how you can too:
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