Paducah draws in artists to once-blighted area with new approach

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Mark Palmer's home and gallery at 524 Harrison St. in Paducah shows no hints of what it was just a few years ago.

The two-story federal-style home, built sometime in the 1840s or 1850s, has walls covered by clean, white paint, new floors, an art gallery downstairs and a modern studio-style apartment upstairs. This is a building Palmer purchased for $1 in Paducah's Lowertown district that likely would have otherwise been razed.

Palmer moved into the building from Washington, D.C., in September 2002, just two years into Paducah's artist relocation program, and opened his gallery a year later. He was the fifth artist to take part in the program.

"When I first moved here people would ask me where I live and I would say Lowertown," Palmer said. They cringed when he told them.

But now Palmer sees a revitalization going on in this old, once-blighted area of the city, thanks to the relocation program. While the program isn't perfect and the revitalization is ongoing, Palmer sees good things happening in Lowertown. But the program is still young.

"It's almost like a test tube experiment," said Palmer.

The city began its relocation as an innovative approach to revitalizing the Lowertown section. Artists are offered a package of enticements: Lowertown is dual zoned for commercial and residential use, 100 percent financing for purchase or rehabilitation of an existing structure or building of a new structure, a basic loan package with a 30-year fixed rate loan with 7 percent interest, $2,500 for architectural services and other professional fees and a national marketing campaign.

Since 2000, 70 visual, culinary and literary artists have taken advantage of the program, according to Artist Relocation Program director Renee Nunez.

Rosemarie Steele, marketing director of the Paducah Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the city has seen results from the program, attracting visitors from cities like Nashville, Tenn., Chicago and St. Louis.

Paducah has several attractions it uses to bring in those visitors based primarily on arts and cultural offerings: the Lowertown District, the new 1,800-seat Luther F. Carson Four Rivers Center performance hall, the Museum of the American Quilter's Society, the city's "Wall to Wall" floodwall mural, the Maiden Alley Cinema, the Yeiser Art Center and other attractions.

Steele is responsible for marketing Paducah and Lowertown and says her organization's national campaign has gotten results, marketing Paducah as a city of "Art, Rhythm and Rivers."

Occupancy rates in hotels have risen, Steele said, and a recent marketing campaign in the Chicago Tribune's Sunday magazine garnered about 2,000 responses.

"People are responding to our advertising ... a lot of galleries are telling us it's working, so that's encouraging," Steele said.

Chuck Martin, director of the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Cape Girardeau uses many of the same aspects as Paducah to market the city -- a riverfront, history and cultural offerings -- but probably doesn't focus as much on art and culture as Paducah, instead using a broad appeal to attract visitors.

Cape Girardeau has no similar program, but Mayor Jay Knudtson said he's intrigued by the idea of using art and culture as a primary tool to attract visitors to the city, especially music.

"They have a formula that has worked ... one that I'm really challenging Old Town Cape and many folks in Cape to model," Knudtson said. "It appears we're not going to try to model the arts, per se, we're going to try and grab what we feel is the cornerstone of our downtown, and that's the music part.

"They have taken an area of town that was clearly blighted and downtrodden and have virtually converted homes in disrepair to support their downtown. I say good for them. We can hopefully learn something from them. That's why we're having an exchange.

Sometimes we don't have to re-invent the wheel, we just need to look at how it's been done in other places."

Knudtson said there has been talk of revitalizing something like Riverfest, or creating a renewed focus on the City of Roses Music Festival. But that doesn't mean the city will necessarily subsidize the arts as a means to downtown revitalization. Instead the city provides some money to Old Town Cape, an agency with the purpose of revitalizing downtown.

Paducah's artist relocation program hasn't been perfect. Some artists haven't made it in the small town, others like Aphrodite Gallery owner Julie Shaw, who relocated from Ignacio, Colo., have persevered through the struggles.

"We need more customers," said Shaw, who adds that every year business improves and the neighborhood becomes less dilapidated.

One recent transplant is Michael Crouse, owner of the Broken Stone Press, who came to Paducah last May from Huntsville, Ala. Crouse teaches workshops on lithography from his home/studio.

"Overall it's very positive," Crouse said on his outlook for Lowertown. "I moved without the illusion that I would get rich quick."

Still, Crouse said the cultural climate in Paducah isn't as vibrant as he thought it would be. But he also realizes the program is still relatively new.

Knudtson said the efforts to revitalize Cape Girardeau's downtown are still fairly new, in terms of the greater focus that has been put on the effort in recent years. A unifying of businesspeople downtown and a surge of private investment in the area have saved the riverfront from ruin, he said.

And improvements on the horizon, like the opening up the River Campus and its 900-seat performance hall, may help attract artists and others to the downtown area, as has occurred in Lowertown, Knudtson said.

"We are making headway, but we've got a long way to go," said Knudtson.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-661, extension 182