Invest Atlanta's board used its Oct. 16 meeting to put more money behind downtown's small businesses, approving a fresh round of improvement grants and setting up a new microgrant pool aimed squarely at the months before the 2026 FIFA World Cup. With Atlanta scheduled to host eight matches next summer, the city's economic development agency is treating storefronts and street-level activity as part of the tournament preparation.
The first piece of the package was five Small Business Improvement Grants worth $50,000 apiece. The recipients were Bottle Rocket Fine Food and Beverage, Crates ATL, Strikeout Wingz, Subs & Salads Junction and Big Daddy's Kitchen. The money can be spent on both exterior and interior upgrades, and it comes out of four Tax Allocation Districts: Eastside, Westside, Campbellton Road and Perry Bolton. Counting this batch, the program had approved 13 grants since January.
Invest Atlanta CEO Dr. Eloisa Klementich credited the program with helping businesses in parts of the city that have historically gone without investment. Mayor Andre Dickens, who also chairs the Invest Atlanta board, addressed the grant recipients directly, thanking them for opening and for the work of keeping their doors open.
Dickens tied the awards to a wider conversation about legacy businesses. As rents climb and development speeds up, he said, the city is thinking about which established local operators it wants to keep, particularly in neighborhoods like downtown, where leaders are counting on World Cup-era projects to bring new energy.
The second piece was new. The board created the Downtown Small Business World Cup Opportunity Fund, pairing $250,000 from the Eastside TAD with $250,000 from the Westside TAD for a combined $500,000 microgrant program.
Rather than run it in-house, Invest Atlanta handed administration to Central Atlanta Progress, the nonprofit that works on planning and development across the center city. Phil Perkins, CAP's senior vice president for community development, pointed to the group's existing relationships with downtown property owners and business operators, and said bringing CAP in should let the effort move faster at spotting available spaces.
Awards under the fund range from $5,000 to $50,000. The stated goal is to get vacant and underused commercial spaces downtown filled, with both short-term and long-term tenants welcome. The timing is driven by the expected crowd: more than 300,000 visitors are projected to come to Atlanta for the World Cup.
For a look at how downtown grant dollars of this size later helped local businesses into storefronts, see downtownATL's report on the Pop-Up Opportunity Fund.
The grants arrive alongside much larger work in the same part of town. Centennial Yards, the 50-acre redevelopment of the Gulch into an entertainment district, is under construction and is expected to anchor much of the activity around match days. In South Downtown, which is in the middle of a 16-acre makeover, Glide Pizza and Brewhouse Cafe were both lining up new locations at the time of the meeting.
The same board session also cleared several projects outside downtown, including a $26 million tax-exempt loan to rehabilitate 199 apartments at Harris Holmes in the West End, $2.2 million for the first phase of Hollywood Place in Bowen Choice, and $2.5 million to add 20 units at Carey Park, bringing that development to 40.
For downtown, though, the headline was the combination of direct grants to existing businesses and a half-million-dollar pool meant to put new ones into empty spaces before the world arrives.
Original reporting by Delaney Tarr for SaportaReport.
