Gatz

SHEPHERDSTOWN – The Corporation of Shepherdstown has begun developing a stronger relationship with Shepherd University.

According to Mayor James Gatz, after holding some talks with Shepherd University President Mary Hendrix, progress has been made for both organizations to work more closely together. This relationship will, he hopes, enable them both to achieve more through their combined efforts.

“Our partnership with Shepherd is growing,” Gatz said in the Mayor’s Report, during September’s regular town council meeting on Wednesday night. “We’ve been talking about little things that we can improve.”

Gatz noted that the strength of the town-and-gown relationship exists, when both involved parties invest a similar level of effort into it. For this reason, starting with making little changes for each other’s benefit, seemed like a good way to ease into supporting each other’s efforts in bigger ways, in the future.

“We’re going to make things better for each other,” Gatz said. “We’re installing new directional signs to Shepherd University parking Lot A (at the corner of High and Princess Streets), which offers free parking on the weekends and evenings, and we are going to coordinate resources to ensure the McMurran Clock shows the correct time.”

Gatz said the Corporation of Shepherdstown also hopes to facilitate partnerships between local businesses and Shepherd University’s College of Business.

“The business school is very eager to be supportive of town businesses. They have their graduate students, who are eager to do business plans for them and give the businesses help and other types of support,” Gatz said. “They have told us, ‘Tell us which businesses want help,’ so we need to do some work in the background, to see if this is something that businesses want.”

Additionally, he shared that the university is opening up its campus more to public use.

“There’s a former cafeteria building on the property — the dining hall — right there before you reach the bridge into Maryland. It’s right across from the Bavarian Inn,” Gatz said. “They want community groups to rent it, at a reasonable price.”

The building, he noted, is 17,000 square feet in size.

“It’s this huge space,” Gatz said. “It has a commercial kitchen in it, so some people have an idea that it could be used by businesses that need additional kitchen space or that have food trucks and things like that. The property around it overlooks the river – it could even be a fabulous space for a restaurant.”