After two years of clashes with city officials, Donnie Ingram said he will close the Madison and Colonial apartment buildings in Lowertown at 5 p.m. Friday.  "We're pretty much bankrupt," Ingram said Monday. "We had a big meeting today, and there were a lot of tears and that kind of stuff. We just can't fight the city anymore."

Ingram said he does not know what will happen to the nine women living at the Colonial, which offers transitional drug-free housing for women, and the two families at the Madison. Both buildings will be put up for sale.

"Where are these women going to go now?" Ingram said. "Every single one of them will tell you they didn't have anywhere to go after they finished residential treatment. They would have been homeless or forced to go back into situations where there's using going on. How's that going to help the community?"

City Attorney Glenn Denton of Denton & Keuler said Ingram's company, Don-Jon Inc., has two pending lawsuits against the city. An agreement reached in McCracken Circuit Court in March gave Ingram until November to bring the electrical system in the Madison up to code, and Denton said to his knowledge that was proceeding smoothly. A second suit, claiming violations in federal fair housing laws by the city, is "in the very early stages" in U.S. District Court. A scheduling conference is set for Friday. Denton declined further comment and advised city officials to do the same.

Ingram was initially told that the type of housing he was hoping to operate — drug-free housing for women, generally following more intense treatment — was not approved for the residential zone the two buildings are in, but the historic architectural review commission voted to grant a waiver to the project. City officials said later that they would not help Ingram seek grants as long as he operated the facilities in Lowertown. Ingram claimed the city was trying to block his access to needed grant money.

Ingram said that although he is "putting these properties up for sale and leaving western Kentucky, my hope is that someone will implement another special needs housing project in Paducah so people can go and get help. Paducah is going to have to stop sending all the people to Louisville and Lexington to let them deal with the problems. Paducah needs to stand up on its own two feet and handle substance abuse a bit more professionally with the city administration backing them. They need to start talking about the problems instead of acting as if they don't exist."

As published in the Paducah Sun on June 24, 2003

Reported by C.D. Bradley cdbradley@paducahsun.com