Small business owners who are looking for a way to refresh their business might have a solution with the City of San Diego’s Storefront Improvement Program, which offers free professional design and financial assistance to improve the curb appeal of local storefronts.

To qualify, businesses must be located in the City of San Diego and have a valid business tax certificate. Applicants also must be commercial occupants of the property and have street-level and street-facing property. The program is open to businesses that employ 25 or fewer people.

“The Storefront Improvement Program is one of the most effective and straightforward ways the City can help small businesses, by putting improvement dollars back in the hands of the owner,” said Christina Bibler, director of the City’s Economic Development Department. “It was created specifically to help offset the cost of making businesses look nicer and has resulted in transformative results for over a hundred small businesses throughout the past decade.”

The program offers 10 hours of design time with a licensed professional and reimbursement of half the project cost up to $8,000. If businesses are located in the SD Promise Zone, a federally designated area, they could qualify for a 30% increase of $10,400 in project costs.

Applicants must identify what improvements they’d like to make, the goals the improvements will achieve and how much they’d like to spend on the project. Each applicant must also include two high-resolution photos of the current look of the building with their completed applications.

To apply, business owners may visit sandiego.gov/economic-development/business/starting/improvement.