When so many efforts to redevelop Fort Ritchie failed, why is the Ritchie Revival working?

CASCADE — If you haven't gone up the mountain to Fort Ritchie lately, you might try heading up there on a weekend.

Since we last checked in on Ritchie's redevelopment, more new businesses have opened, the "finger buildings" have been transformed and the warm weather has brought outdoors enthusiasts in droves to the former Army installation on South Mountain.

"Weekends are busy around here," says developer John Krumpotich, who bought some 500 acres of the former fort in 2021 and founded Ritchie Revival to redevelop it.

"When you have, how many weeks in a row Lakeside Hall has a wedding; the coffee shop is open; the tap room is open, the gallery's open, the museum is open, the ice cream shop's open, people are fishing and hiking. You know, you drive through on the weekends and you're like, 'this is a different place,'" he said. "This is nothing like what this was three years ago."

When Krumpotich took possession of the property three years ago, the only thing still operating at Fort Ritchie was the community center , which the county had maintained after the Army opted to close the fort in 1998.

"When we got here, all the roads going back past the fire hall were all barricaded," Krumpotich said. "You couldn't even go back there … at that time, when we would see a car on the property, we were like 'what are you doing here?' And now, boy has that completely changed."

There are about a dozen new businesses at the fort now, with more in the works. The nearly abandoned fort now boasts three manufacturers , the Lakeside Hall events venue, a café , an ice cream shop , a pub, a salon and day spa , a studio gallery , a small museum , a pet groomer and a primary care clinic .

And then there are the 58 townhouses, formerly homes for military families, now being occupied by a whole generation of new residents.

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All of these are the result of renovation rather than new construction. The first of eight "finger buildings," the small buildings that line Barrick Avenue, being renovated this summer is complete and recently saw its first use as an overnight rental.

Krumpotich plans to have the first eight — there are 36 altogether — completed by the end of August. Several more, he said, should be renovated by the end of the year.

These small buildings, which served variously as classrooms, mess halls, offices, etc., will have both residential and commercial uses, he said. The first eight will be used for overnight lodging for the remainder of the wedding season — to accommodate those using Lakeside Hall, the former officers club, for nuptial events — but will be available for rental residences this fall.

Think "tiny house" up in the mountain … although, once you walk in, they don't seem quite as tiny as you might imagine.

When they're all completed, Krumpotich said, some will be residential rentals, some will be available for overnight lodging and some will be developed for commercial and retail use.

He's negotiating with more businesses to come to the fort, but there's still a lot of renovating to do. When he bought the fort, the package included scores of decaying buildings; he and the Ritchie Revival crew are redeveloping them as quickly as they can.

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Tap room takes off

The long-awaited Top Secret Tap Room , which now occupies Building 102 at the fort. Once upon a time, it housed a theater in the basement for training the Ritchie Boys — servicemen specially trained at Ritchie for intelligence missions during World War II. It also was used for a library and service club.

It now boasts a bar, pub fare and indoor and outdoor seating. There's even a fireplace. It's managed by Krumpotich's wife, Joyce Johnson, and is open Thursdays through Sundays for now. Krumpotich says that schedule might expand in the future.

The tap room, named in honor of the fort's history of intelligence work, has been a hit so far. "The tap room has been great," he said, "a wild success." It has hosted trivia nights, live music — even arm-wrestling competitions.

At some point, Krumpotich hopes to add a steak house to Ritchie's roster of eateries, but that's probably a year off.

For the past few summers, the fort has hosted farmers markets. "The farmers market has done exceptionally well," Krumpotich said. He believes some of those vendors will eventually set up shop in the finger buildings.

"The nice part is, is that there was so much here, and you're doing so much, but every time something opens you just get a little wind in your sail," he said. Yeah. "You're slogging and it opens and you're like, 'there we go,' and then the next one opens, you're like, 'here we go.' … A you keep finishing buildings, and they keep getting used, it's super exciting."

Other efforts failed. Why is this one working?

The saga of how the fort languished after the Pentagon opted to close it as part of its Base Realignment and Closure program is well-known, but the condensed version is that the federal government gave it to the state, which gave it to the county, which tried for years to market the property for redevelopment.

After repeated failures to reach any long-term success, the county sold the fort to Krumpotich. What's he doing that nobody else seemed to manage?

"We really tapped into what the local community was hoping to see here," he said. "I think that was a big thing because they just wanted the buildings to be restored. They weren't looking for some monstrous grandiose plan, it was more of an organic thing.

"The other thing is we've just got a terrific team, and everybody's just bought in and we all just are kind of going towards the same goal. … We're all local, so your heart is in the place, you know, it's not just a cold, calculated business decision; you're trying to do something that's really beneficial to the whole area where everybody here raises their kids. So I think that was a different approach."

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A more gradual approach than had been proposed before has also helped, he said.

"I think we've been able to really succeed in the smaller avenue where it's like, you turn on five or 10 buildings a year, with local businesses, or people that were from here or live here or whatever it is, and they become part of the team, part of the family. I just think that's how it kind of had to work. It's more of an organic approach than that large, whole-scale let's put in 10-story hotels, and everything else. I just don't think that was ever going to work."

Rather than somebody coming in with an elaborate plan and telling the residents what was going to happen at the fort, Krumpotich looked at what was there and started exploring what kinds of businesses would work, what was needed and what would support the community of Cascade.

"We try to work with local businesses," he said. "We really tried not to compete directly with a lot of local businesses, because it's just such a cool little town … the interest (in the fort) was always here. I just think the plans were ridiculous."

And it doesn't hurt that Krumpotich lives in Cascade himself, or that his first priority was getting the fort housing in shape for new tenants.

"I'm really accessible," he said, "so everybody in town kind of comes up and says, 'hey, here's what we're hoping to see here."

Right now, those requests and the fact that many of these businesses are approaching Ritchie Revival are fueling the growth.

"A lot of those ideas, sometimes you go, 'man, we're not set up for this.' But the smaller, you know, small-town type businesses, they fit; they work. Yeah. And that's just what we're after."

Redeveloping the fort is a life's work for Krumpotich, his wife and the team at Ritchie Revival.

"You get tired. The family gets tired. The work team gets tired. But this place gives back so much. Because for all the times you have interactions where people are like, 'here's what we need, here's what we need,' you have so many people that come up to you and just say 'thank you.' So the place gives back. I mean, it really does. You just gotta keep going.

"You just can't stop."

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: When so many efforts to redevelop Fort Ritchie failed, why is the Ritchie Revival working?