Carpenter and her brother, Brandon, opened the architectural design firm on East Main Street last year. But the building is bland, and often hard for clients to find. The Carpenters hope to make the building more attractive with help from the Downtown Façade Improvement Grant program, which the Town Council approved last week.

The Carpenters want to paint the cinderblock green, add flower boxes and revamp the windows. “We needed to do something to the building itself,” Holley Carpenter said. “At this point, it kind of blends into the background and doesn’t have a lot of punch to it. It’s an adorable building with a lot of potential for it to be something wonderful.”

HomeTowne Realty owns Clayton Mart, a convenience store, which also plans to apply for a grant. James Lipscomb, co-owner of HomeTowne, said the property, also on East Main Street, needed extensive landscaping, more parking and shrubbery to hide a Dumpster.

HomeTowne had planned on doing some renovations, but the grant will allow it to do more, Lipscomb said.

“The grant made a difference to us,” he said. “We had planned to replace the water and sewer lines. We were doing the project, but when the grant became available, we decided to add the landscaping feature to it.”

The Downtown Development Association began the grant program last month by offering commercial property owners a reimbursement of 25 percent — up to $1,250 — per storefront. To the DDA’s disappointment, no one applied for a grant.

“There is no sense in having a program that is not going to work and people are not going to take advantage of,” said Bruce Naegelen, director of downtown development. “We thought with the lower amount, we would do more projects, but we are not doing any projects. We would rather have several good projects than no improvements.”

In an effort to attract buildings owners, the DDA has increased the reimbursement to 50 percent, up to $5,000 per storefront. Naegelen said 75 to 100 downtown buildings are eligible for the grant.

“To be fair, there are a number of property owners in the past year who have made some improvements to the facades through painting,” he said.

Property owners can receive reimbursements for exterior-wall cleaning, signage, windows, lighting, railings, design services, landscaping, canopies, porches and awnings.

“The buildings are in good shape generally speaking,” Naegelen said. “We just need to polish them up.”

Joyce Blackley, owner of Blackley’s Printing, has seen how incentive programs can encourage owners to renovate their buildings.

A few years ago, Clayton building owners could get reimbursed for new awnings. Participation was high, and Blackley, president of the DDA, hope the new grant program will spark the same interest.

“We want people to know we are concerned about our downtown,” she said. “We have a lot of beauty here and also some needs we want to balance out.”