For the better part of two years, mentioning Baltimore Street to anyone who shops downtown usually got you the same response: a sigh about detours, dust, and the summer City Lights American Grill lost its outdoor tables to a construction fence. That story was true, and it was loud. The quieter story, the one that actually finished this summer, is that the corner everyone watched sit empty the longest just filled in, and most of Cumberland walked past the news without clocking it.
That corner is 69 Baltimore Street. The building is called the McCleave Building, dating to 1866, and until this year it had been vacant for so long that "future hotel site" had become part of its identity. In June 2026, it reopened as The Wills Hotel, a 20-room boutique property with a first-floor restaurant called 1867. That date matters because it closes a loop that started with tax credit applications and city council votes years earlier. The building that housed Ford's Pharmacy in an earlier life, then the McCleave family's businesses for nearly seventy years, then a clothing store called The Manhattan, is now the last major storefront on that stretch of Baltimore Street to go from "coming soon" to open.
The Corner That Took The Longest To Fill
The Wills Hotel's rooms lean into the building's age rather than hiding it. Exposed brick, dark wood, glass lantern bedside lamps, a nature-inspired palette of greens and browns. It's built for the C&O Canal Towpath crowd as much as anyone else, with on-site bike storage and a small sundry shop for guests heading out at dawn. The restaurant, 1867, focuses on a steakhouse and seafood menu, open daily for dinner and Monday through Saturday for lunch, with a weekday happy hour at the bar.
If you've lived here through the Baltimore Street construction years, the significance isn't the thread count. It's that this was the project city officials kept referencing every time someone asked when the disruption would be worth it. The renovation ran over budget by roughly $600,000, and covering that gap took a combination of city money, an Allegany County contribution, and support from the Senator George C. Edwards Fund. That's not a small ask for a 20-room building. It happened because the McCleave Building's exterior cornice and window ornamentation qualified it for a $1.4 million historic revitalization tax credit from the Maryland Historical Trust, one of only two Allegany County projects to receive that support in its funding round.
What Filled In While You Were Detouring Around It
The Wills Hotel gets the attention because it's the last piece and the most photogenic, but it wasn't the only thing that opened while Baltimore Street was torn up. Downtown's business mix looks different now than it did before construction started, and most of the change happened in storefronts that don't have a hotel's marketing budget.
Since the project began, Baltimore Street has added:
- Basecamp Coffee Co.
- Ferleman Gallery
- Myla & Maple
- Sabroso Tacos
- Queen City Creamery Scoop Shop
- Downtown D'Atri Pasta & Subs
- Mountain Maryland Trading Post
- Madison Paige Boutique
- AJ's Cookie Jar
- Elijah Thane Art
- SomaSou Med Spa
- Cats Cradle Vintage and Thrift
- The Three Stars Arts
- An Edward Jones office in the Rosenbaum Building
That's according to Downtown Development Commission Executive Director Melinda Kelleher, who tracked the wave of new tenants that arrived during and after the construction period. The same reporting noted that the city and county issued roughly $8,500 grants to 11 downtown businesses to help offset lost revenue during the worst of the disruption, a recognition that the rebuild's cost wasn't only measured in dollars spent on infrastructure. It also showed up in dining rooms that lost their patio seating and in a summer where water service dropped out mid-shift more than once.
The pattern worth noticing is that none of these businesses waited for Baltimore Street to be finished before opening. They opened into the mess, which is a different kind of bet than opening into a ribbon-cutting.
The Friday Night Habit That Outlasted The Dust
Friday After Five never stopped during any of this, and it's still running this month. The lineup for September 13, 2026 had Bryne String Band opening at 6 p.m. and Megan Jean's Secret Family closing out the night through 10:30, hosted outside Mezzos at 114 S. Centre Street rather than the Baltimore Street mall where the series has traditionally set up around the McCoury Stage. That's a small shift, but it says something about a downtown with enough going on that a free concert series can rotate host venues without losing its footing.
That same weekend also carried the Allegany Museum's Whiskey Rebellion event and the Heritage Days Festival on Washington Street and Prospect Square, three separate draws inside 48 hours that didn't have to compete for oxygen. If you missed all of it, the Thursday farmers market at Canal Place keeps running through October, and Ferleman Gallery's exhibit of Hillmar Gottesthal's work is up through October 30, which gives you a real deadline if a gallery night has been on your list since it opened during the construction years.
One Corner Still Waiting On Its Turn
Not every part of Cumberland's retail map moved at the same pace. Out at Cumberland Gateway, the retail strip off Maryland Avenue near Interstate 68, Chipotle opened earlier this year and reportedly changed the calculus for the whole property. Economic development officials said interest in the remaining Gateway parcels picked up noticeably once Chipotle was operating. But the Royal Farms slated for the corner lot at Maryland Avenue and Park Street was still in the site work phase as of this year's development update, with construction beginning after the property transferred to the store's ownership group. There's no public timeline yet for when it opens.
The contrast is useful context if you've been assuming all of Cumberland's retail growth is moving at the same clip. Baltimore Street's redevelopment took years and multiple funding sources to close out. Cumberland Gateway is a newer, highway-facing project running on its own schedule, and right now that schedule has one open anchor and one still under construction.
Why This Is Worth Knowing If You Already Live Here
The easy version of this story is "downtown got a hotel." The more accurate version is that a multi-year public and private investment in one specific street quietly crossed a finish line this year, and the proof isn't a press conference. It's a Friday night concert that can afford to change venues, a gallery exhibit with an actual closing date, a farmers market still running into fall, and a hotel restaurant now competing for your Friday dinner reservation instead of sitting behind construction mesh.
If you've been driving around Baltimore Street out of habit rather than walking it, this fall is a reasonable time to break that habit. The businesses that opened during the disruption years are the ones that bet on this street before there was proof it would pay off. The Wills Hotel and 1867 are the proof.
Cumberland's downtown has spent years being described in terms of what it's becoming. Right now, for the first time in a while, it's worth describing in terms of what it actually is.
If you're thinking about what a neighborhood like this means for buying, selling, or investing in Western Maryland, Homes by Pamela Terry has spent two decades watching towns like Cumberland go through exactly this kind of change. Work With Pamela if you want a read on the market that's grounded in what's actually happening on the ground, not just what the listing photos show.
