The Knoxville City Council approved four facade improvement grant applications at their meeting Monday night, with twelve total now being approved for 2025. 

The city introduced this first of its kind program in 2022 and had 22 applications during the first round. Now in the fourth year of this program, the city has awarded over 50 applications after the four were approved Monday night, and another eight were approved at a previous meeting earlier this year. Business owners can submit applications for facade improvements, in which the city will provide a reimbursement of 50% up to $10,000. 

The biggest change for this year is that not only are downtown commercial buildings eligible, but the city opened up the window for commercial buildings along Lincoln and West Pleasant Streets. Three more applications will be reviewed at the next meeting. City Manager Heather Ussery says the city has been pleased with how the program has gone.

“Overall for this year’s program I definitely think it’s been successful. We’ve had a large group of applicants and we opened it up to West Pleasant this year and several of those applications have been for properties on West Pleasant so overall that is a successful change as well. We’re thankful for the business owners who continue to invest in their properties and the City is pleased with the overall success and hopefully will be able to continue it moving forward.”

The application for First United Methodist Church was not approved at the meeting and was pulled for further consideration. For a complete list of applications approved over the last two meetings, see the council meeting minutes here. Hear more from Ussery on today’s Let’s Talk Knoxville.