UPDATE: The small business incentives listed in this article were approved as part of the Covington Board of Commissioners consent agenda on Sept. 9, 2025. –LINK nky editorial, Sept. 11, 2025.
The Covington Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to chart a longer-term strategy for keeping businesses in the city.
The vote directs the city’s staff to make fresh recommendations on long-term business retention for Covington, augmenting the efforts it is already making to attract small businesses.
“We have a variety of different incentive programs to help make sure that we’re attracting and maintaining businesses,” said Commissioner Tim Downing, who first brought the idea to the board. “I think this is one of those that seems obvious on the surface, but I would like to make sure that we, as a commission body and future commission bodies, have a kind of a longer term view.”
The city has already created several incentive programs, which include grants for building refurbishments, aid for paying rent, and performing historical preservation, to encourage local entrepreneurs and small businesses to set up roots in the city, not only to bolster the community’s economic landscape but also to cultivate the city’s cultural identity.
In fact, the board heard several proposals for incentives at Tuesday’s meeting, all of which were placed on the consent agenda for next week, meaning they will likely pass.
The incentives discussed on Tuesday are listed below:
- $10,000 grant for facade improvements to Kathy Jones Aesthetics on 5th Street
- $10,000 grant for facade improvement for a vacant building owned by the Center for Great Neighborhoods on Lee Street, which the center hopes to one day convert into an artist’s or photographer’s studio or something similar
- $6,000 rent subsidy for A Servant’s Heart on Pike Street, which provides medical training
- $6,000 rent subsidy for Dirty Dawgs Spa, a pet grooming center on Union Street in Latonia
- $6,000 rent subsidy for Liberty Tax, which provides tax preparation services, on Madison Avenue
- A $10,000, 4:1 private-public match grant to aid in the restoration of the Village Theater marquee in Mainstrasse.
“That’s very exciting,” said Mayor Ron Washington of the theater restoration. “That’ll be very nice.”
Just what the eventual recommendations from city staff will be is up in the air at this point, but the other commissioners spoke highly of the city’s current efforts.
“The presentation today highlights that,” Downing said. “We have a lot of businesses we welcome into our community.”
One of the commissioners, Shannon Smith, who owns several businesses in the city, including Revival Vintage Bottle Shop, was even a beneficiary of such incentives in the past.
“I started my business here,” Smith said. “The city matched my rent when I could barely afford it, and since then, I’ve grown my business, obviously, started another, ran for office, and here I am. So, I believe in the program, I believe in what we’re doing, and I firmly support it.”
The board will likely revisit the topic in the coming months.
Downing presented the idea during the discussion time near the meeting’s conclusion, as it was not something that appeared on the meeting’s original agenda, before asking for a motion from the commission. The vote to direct staff to develop something was unanimous.