How Main Street America grants and historic tax credits shape walkable downtowns

What to take away

• Main Street America grants historic tax credits walkability work together: one pays for facades and sidewalks, the other offsets the cost of fixing historic storefront buildings.
• The federal historic tax credit equals 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation spending on income-producing certified historic buildings.
• The National Park Service runs the eligibility and certification process, and projects must follow the Secretary of the Interior's Standards.
• Named downtowns such as Danville, Virginia; Dubuque, Iowa; and Fort Worth, Texas show how the money changes real blocks.
• Walkability improves when storefronts reopen, upper floors fill, and the street edge becomes continuous again.

What Main Street America grants pay for in a downtown

Main Street America is the national coordinating program for local Main Street organizations. Its grant program, often delivered with partner funders, pays for the small physical things that make a downtown feel walkable. That means facade repairs, awnings, signage, window replacement, paint, and sometimes sidewalk and lighting work tied to a storefront.

The grants are usually modest and local. A typical award covers part of a project, and the owner or the city covers the rest. The point is to fix the pedestrian edge of the street, not to rebuild a whole block.

That edge matters more than most people think. A continuous line of occupied storefronts gives a walker something to look at, a reason to keep going, and a sense of safety. Empty windows and blank walls do the opposite.

The block structure, shade and reused land that make a downtown pleasant to cross on foot depend on this kind of small, repeated investment.

Main Street America grants also fund design help. A local program can hire an architect to draw facade plans for several buildings at once. That lowers the cost per building and keeps the block visually consistent.

Some grants pay for sidewalk repair, tree pits, benches, and bike racks. These are cheap compared with road projects, and they change how the street feels within a season. Federal community planning programs can stack with them.

The 25red-HUD Community Planning and Development | HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) office administers block grants and planning funds that many towns use for exactly this kind of downtown street work.

A facade grant rarely covers a full rehab. It is a starter. The larger money for a historic building usually comes from the tax credit side, which is why the two tools are discussed together.

How federal historic tax credits work on a storefront building

A federal historic tax credit is not a grant. It is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of federal income tax owed, equal to 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures on a certified historic building used for income-producing purposes.

On a storefront building, that usually means the ground floor is commercial and the upper floors are apartments or offices. The building must be certified historic, either individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places or contributing to a registered historic district.

The work must be substantial. The rehab spending has to exceed the adjusted basis of the building, which is roughly what the owner paid for it minus land value and depreciation. In practice, most downtown storefront projects clear that bar because the building was bought cheap.

Qualified expenditures include structural work, masonry repair, windows, roofs, heating and cooling, and interior finishes. They do not include landscaping, sidewalks, or new construction additions. That split matters for walkability: the credit fixes the building, while grants and local funds fix the street.

The credit is usually sold to an investor through a syndication partnership. A developer with a small project may not owe enough tax to use the credit, so a bank or syndicator buys it at a discount and provides equity up front. That equity is what pays for construction.

State credits often stack on top. Many states run their own historic tax credit programs that follow the federal rules, which raises the total subsidy and makes marginal storefront projects feasible.

The National Park Service explains the basic structure of these incentives, including how they are used in downtown revitalization. See Historic Preservation Tax Incentives (U.S. National Park Service) for the program overview.

Eligibility and the application path before you rehab a facade

The process starts before design work, not after. An owner who repairs a facade and then applies may find the work does not qualify.

Here is the sequence the National Park Service expects.

1. Confirm the building is certified historic, either individually listed or a contributing building in a National Register district. Your state historic preservation office holds the records.
2. Describe the rehab in a Part 1 application, which establishes the building's significance and the scope of work.
3. Submit Part 2, the detailed rehabilitation plan, with drawings and specifications, before construction begins. NPS reviews it against the Secretary of the Interior's Standards.
4. Complete the work as approved. Changes require an amendment, not a surprise at the end.
5. File Part 3 after construction to certify the completed work and release the credit.

The state historic preservation office reviews each part first, then forwards it to the National Park Service. Review times vary by state and by project complexity. The Technical Preservation Services (U.S. National Park Service) page lays out the before-you-apply steps, including the three-part application.

A practical tip: get the Part 2 approval before buying materials. Owners who order windows early, then learn the profile is wrong, lose both time and money.

Local Main Street programs often help owners assemble applications. They know which architects have done tax credit work and which contractors understand historic masonry. That local knowledge is often the difference between a funded project and a stalled one.

Named downtowns where credits funded sidewalk and storefront work

Three downtowns show how these tools land on real blocks.

Danville, Virginia. The Danville River District used historic tax credits to convert tobacco warehouses and storefronts into apartments, offices, and shops. The city paired that with streetscape work: new sidewalks, period lighting, and street trees along the main commercial blocks.

Upper floors that had been empty for decades now hold residents, which puts more people on the sidewalk at all hours.

Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque's Main Street program used facade grants and historic tax credits on a run of Victorian-era commercial buildings. The city rebuilt sidewalks and added brick pavers and benches in the same corridor. The result is a continuous walkable edge along several blocks that had been patchy.

Fort Worth, Texas. In the Near Southside and Sundance Square areas, historic tax credits helped rehab older commercial buildings while the city and the downtown district funded wide sidewalks, shade, and lighting. The blocks now connect residential edges to the core on foot.

Other examples follow the same pattern. In Lowell, Massachusetts, mill buildings and commercial blocks were rehabbed with credits, and the city tied the work to canal-side walkways. In Boise, Idaho, the Basque Block and nearby historic storefronts used credits and facade money, with sidewalk and lighting improvements in the same corridor.

A note on how to read these places: the visible change is often the storefront, but the walkability change comes from the sidewalk, the lighting, and the people now living above the shops. These walkable downtowns cost money that was spent over years, not in one construction season.

Secretary of the Interior's Standards and what they allow

The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation are ten principles that govern work on historic buildings. They are the rules that decide whether a project qualifies for the federal credit.

The core ideas are simple. Keep the building's historic character. Repair rather than replace. Do not remove historic material that can be saved. If a feature is missing, replace it in kind, not with a modern substitute that reads as fake.

The standards allow modern use. A historic storefront can become a restaurant, a co-working space, or apartments. New mechanical systems, insulation, and accessibility features are allowed when they do not damage historic fabric.

They also allow new construction on the site, as long as it does not destroy the historic building and is differentiated from it. That is why so many credit projects have a modern rear addition or a new wing.

The standards matter for walkability because they protect the street edge. Original storefront windows, transoms, and doors are what make a downtown block feel like a downtown. Replacing them with blank stucco panels kills that feel, and the credit review will reject it.

The National Park Service publishes the full standards and guidance. The The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties - Technical Preservation Services (U.S. National Park Service) page lists the ten standards and the treatment approaches.

Accessibility work is allowed and often required. The Americans with Disabilities Act and the ADA Accessibility Guidelines apply to commercial buildings, and preservation staff generally accept ramps, door hardware, and interior changes that meet access rules without damaging historic features. The two sets of rules can be reconciled, but it takes planning early.

Reading a revitalized block: what the money left behind

Walk a rehabilitated block and you can often date the work by what you see. New sidewalks and street trees usually mean a city streetscape project. Restored cornices, transoms, and brick mean a historic tax credit project. Awnings and new signs often mean a facade grant.

Here is a short field checklist for reading a downtown block.

• Continuous storefronts with occupied ground floors
• Upper-floor windows with lights on in the evening
• Sidewalks wide enough for two people to pass
• Street trees with real tree pits, not just pots
• Benches and lighting at a pedestrian scale
• Historic window profiles and transoms still in place
• Ramps or level entries that meet ADA rules

If most boxes are checked, the block has had both building-side and street-side investment. If only the buildings look fixed and the sidewalk is cracked, the credit money came but the street money did not.

That pattern is common. Tax credits are driven by building owners, and they fix buildings. Sidewalk and lighting work depends on city capital budgets, Main Street programs, and federal planning funds. The towns that feel most walkable are the ones that did both, block by block, over a decade or more.

There are walkable downtowns time patterns in how these sequences play out. The order matters: building rehab tends to come first, because it brings residents and customers, and street work follows once there is foot traffic to justify it.

Cost is part of the picture for anyone planning a visit or a move. A town's check hotel sidewalk google street view habit tells you what you will pay for lodging and food, and it also predicts how finished the sidewalks will feel.

For travelers trying to judge a downtown before arriving, the city's zoning map to find mixed-use districts is a useful shortcut. Those districts are where storefront rehab and sidewalk money tend to concentrate.

Technical Preservation Services maintains a broad index of preservation guidance for Main Street work, from masonry to storefronts to accessibility. The Site Index - Technical Preservation Services (U.S. National Park Service) page is the entry point for that material.

Two federal programs beyond the tax credit also matter. The National Park Service Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program helps communities plan trails and connections to downtowns. Metropolitan Planning Organizations write the pedestrian plans that steer federal transportation money to sidewalk and crossing projects, often in the same corridors where credits are working.

The result, when it works, is a downtown where the building line and the walking line reinforce each other. The credit keeps the historic storefront. The grant pays for the sign and the awning. The city fixes the sidewalk. None of those alone makes a walkable downtown, but together they do.

Common questions

Do Main Street America grants and historic tax credits fund the same work? No. Main Street America grants typically pay for facades, signs, awnings, and sometimes sidewalk items. The federal historic tax credit offsets the cost of rehabilitating a certified historic building, mainly the structure and interior.

Can a storefront owner use both a grant and a tax credit on one building? Often yes, if the costs are separated. Grant-funded items like a new sign may not count as qualified rehabilitation expenditures, but the building work can still earn the credit.

How much is the federal historic tax credit worth? It equals 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures on a certified historic building used for income-producing purposes, provided the project meets the substantial rehab test and the standards.

What happens if I start work before applying? You risk losing the credit. The National Park Service expects Part 2 approval before construction, and work done before approval may not qualify.

Do the Secretary of the Interior's Standards block modern windows or accessibility ramps? They do not block them outright. Modern systems and access features are allowed when they do not damage historic character, but the design must be reviewed and approved first.

Why do some downtowns get credits but still feel unwalkable? Because building rehab and street work are separate funding streams. A town can restore its storefronts with credits while leaving sidewalks narrow, cracked, or poorly lit.