Their new Kentucky homes -- and art studios

In 2 1/2 years, nearly 40 people have moved here to transform a beat-up area of homes known as Lower Town into a blossoming art colony. The inspiration was Paducah’s Artist Relocation Program, which has exerted a magnetic pull on people who’ve dreamed of living, working and, most importantly, owning in a neighborhood of like-minded residents.

The newcomers have come from as far away as San Francisco and Massachusetts to take advantage of incentives making it easy for them to buy old houses -- at dirt-cheap prices -- to turn into studios and galleries. Almost to a person, these painters, sculptors, muralists, printmakers and jewelers say they never, ever pictured themselves moving to Kentucky.

“Three years ago, if someone had said to me, ‘You’re going to be living in Paducah,’ I would’ve said, ‘You’re out of your mind,’ ” said Mark Palmer, a painter from Washington, D.C., who had set foot in Kentucky only once before the program brought him here. “Life just has a way of presenting things you have no way to anticipate.”

The prospect of owning a home and workplace has been a powerful attraction for these artists, noted program founder and painter/printmaker Mark Barone. The incentives, plus the town’s relatively low cost of living, inspired some newcomers to plunge full time into their art.

“Bill Renzulli is an example of that,” Barone said. “He was a medical doctor [in Maryland] by training but is a serious painter who had been in and out of it as a profession for years. Our program gave him the confidence and opportunity to return to it full time. He’d heard about us, came to visit in the winter -- said he wanted to see the town at its worst -- and called us a couple days later to say he’s coming.”

Living and working here does not preclude traveling to shows, conducting Internet sales and building a gallery business, Barone noted. Furthermore, the Lower Town artists need not worry about urban gentrification driving up rents for studios and living space, a situation they frequently face in big cities. Here, the artists are their own landlords.

The houses Paducah offers have been claimed by the city for back taxes or bought from owners more than happy to unload, in a few cases, code-violating structures. In some instances, the city relocated displaced Lower Town residents.

“We’ve done it a variety of ways, and we’ve actually just given property away,” said Tom Barnett, Paducah’s planning director. “We’ve also bought homes at market price and sold them for less, but it’s worth it just to get the neighborhood revitalized. We’re willing to talk. The long-term impact can’t help but be good.”

Julie Shaw’s house, for example, was once owned by the family of a man who was Paducah’s mayor in the late 1800s. It is a two-story brick structure with two stately, white columns framing the front. Inside, the house contains 3,300 square feet of space.

Barnett said the city bought the house for $50,000 and sold it to Shaw, who makes handcrafted jewelry, for $40,000. He estimates a full restoration and remodeling would cost close to $250,000.

Shaw said the old Victorian mansion still has much of its original structural detail, though the hardwood floors on the first level were destroyed in the great flood of 1937 and its slate roof has been replaced by shingles.

She intends to create a studio, gallery and living quarters in the house, with the work to be completed by August, when she moves in. She can take advantage of relocation program incentives, including $2,500 bonuses for services such as landscaping and architect fees, generous fixed-rate loans from the locally owned Paducah Bank, discounts on building materials, and friendly zoning permitting artists to work and do business in their homes.

“To be honest, I was pretty skeptical of the whole [program] at first,” said Wally Bateman, bank president. “My fear was that we were going to have this Volkswagen bus pull up with people who were simply penniless. But the applicants have turned out to be absolutely wonderful, wonderful additions. Their credit’s been excellent and, in some cases, they brought cash in addition to artistic skills.”

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Spurring development

City officials estimate the artist relocation program pumped an extra $12 million to $15 million into the local economy last year, and it’s safe to assume much of it went to local contractors and tradespeople. The Lower Town streets are alive with construction trucks and vehicles making deliveries to sounds of pounding hammers and whining electric saws and drills.

Later this spring, Barone, Barnett and Mayor William Paxton III will fly to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual American Planning Assn. convention. Paducah will receive the group’s Special Community Initiative award, which goes annually to a city displaying an innovative approach to improvement. There were more than 200 entries.

Paducah is not the first community to use artist relocation as a means to spur development, but, judging by the recognition it will receive in Washington, it is one of the most successful. Ironically, the city’s initial goal had nothing to do with furthering the arts.

“I came out of my house one day [in 1999] and saw this drug deal taking place right across the street from where I live,” said Barone, who has lived and worked in Lower Town since 1989. “I couldn’t believe it. I knew the area was going down and things were getting bad, but that was a new low. Something had to be done.”

Barone pestered the city to clean up the neighborhood, won support from then-Mayor Albert Jones and, after looking around and researching possible courses of action, came up with the artist relocation concept. He visited a program in Rising Sun, Ind., to see how it worked, enlisted support from the local private sector and, with Barnett, put together details.

“What you can’t measure is how this adds to the town’s vitality in ways other than economics,” Paxton said. “It’s brought a new type of person into our community with lots of energy and creativity. I’ve made it a point to get to know them. These are people who volunteer and serve on boards. Cities our size [27,000] are dying for this right now.”