The city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development awarded $300,000 in Storefront Opportunity Grants to four Mission District businesses — Downtime, Fried Chicken Palace, Mission Lotería, and Formr — as part of a $3 million-plus citywide round targeting vacant commercial spaces.

Four Mission District businesses have received a combined $300,000 in Storefront Opportunity Grants from the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development — city money aimed at putting vacant commercial spaces back in use along one of San Francisco's busiest commercial corridors.

The grants are split unevenly but purposefully. Downtime, a nightclub planned by the co-owners of Bar Part Time, received $100,000 toward its planned opening at 2243 Mission Street, the former home of Bissap Baobab near 19th Street. Fried Chicken Palace — Michelin-starred chef Seth Stowaway's Southern-style restaurant, which opened in November 2025 at 2240 Mission Street in the former WesBurgers space — also received $100,000. Mission Lotería, which runs a Mexican-style community game in which customers collect characters by visiting participating businesses along the corridor, received $50,000. Formr, a furniture and home-decor shop that uses salvaged materials and employs people who were formerly incarcerated, unhoused, or previously in gangs, received $50,000 and is planning to relocate from SoMa to 1917 Mission Street, near 15th Street, in September.

Jeremy Castillo, a co-owner of Downtime and Bar Part Time, described the financial math of opening in San Francisco plainly. "It's no secret that opening a small business in this city requires an enormous amount of upfront capital between permits, licensing, tenant improvements, ADA compliance, legal fees, and more," he said. "The grant goes directly toward these costs as we navigate the process of opening a major hospitality project."

Stowaway was more direct about what the $100,000 meant for Fried Chicken Palace. "We would only be able to do this because of it," he said. "I don't think we would have been able to keep going. It would have been a real struggle, so it feels like a huge blessing to have gotten that."

The four Mission awards sit within a larger $3 million-plus citywide round — 39 businesses across San Francisco received grants in 2026, with individual awards ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 to cover tenant improvements, equipment, inventory, and startup permitting costs. The program is administered by OEWD jointly with the Office of Small Business as part of a $6.3 million strategy to reactivate commercial corridors. Of the 39 recipients citywide, 25 grants went to BIPOC-owned businesses and 25 to bars or restaurants, according to the city.

On the ground, the four grants represent different stages of arrival. Fried Chicken Palace is already open and serving at the corner of Mission and 19th. Downtime's space at 2243 Mission is set to open later this year. Mission Lotería doesn't anchor a single address — it moves through the corridor as a network of participating storefronts. And Formr won't appear at 1917 Mission until fall. Someone walking the stretch from 15th to 19th today would find one new restaurant in operation, one address preparing to become a nightclub, and two more spaces still working toward the day the grants become open doors.