New Arts, Food, Innovation Hub on the Menu

Food, the arts and education will come together next spring in a vibrant new center in College Park.

The Baltimore development firm War Horse, owned by Scott Plank ’88, has partnered with UMD to repurpose the vacant garage behind the Hotel at the University of Maryland. The company will transform the building into a restaurant, stage, culinary-education kitchen, offices and other collaborative spaces indoors and out for UMD students, faculty and the broader community.

It will be the latest addition to the more than two dozen projects so far in the Greater College Park initiative. The building boom includes new academic spaces; amenities such as housing, the hotel and arts venue MilkBoy + ArtHouse; and new public-private partnerships expanding research and innovation—all extending beyond the campus’s traditional boundaries.

“I’m thrilled to be back on campus using the tools I learned at Maryland to build a fun and exciting platform for artists and entrepreneurs to collaborate,” says Plank, who is also the brother of Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank ’96.

This new project will be modeled after two other recent War Horse redevelopments, Belvedere Square in North Baltimore and the Hall SF in San Francisco, both of which meld dining and the arts in neighborhood gathering places.

The 9,000-square-foot building will be revitalized in two phases, starting with the August opening of the grassy courtyard, with a grill, chairs and tables, and games that encourage outdoor dining, meeting and play.

Next year, new garage doors will allow the outside in, with a covered patio, an additional 200 to 300 seats, a restaurant, a teaching kitchen, and studio recording and performing space with the potential to expand academic connections with the campus.