Looking at his resume, you might assume that Garrett Eagan ’09 studied Business Administration and Entrepreneurship on the Hill. But the fact is that Eagan’s business education was self-taught, and started after graduation, in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland.
After graduating with a major in Communication and a minor in Journalism, Eagan moved back home and started working in local sports radio. He still spends some time on the air broadcasting local college men’s basketball, but his focus shifted to business pursuits in 2013.
While renting a house with friend Chris Hendershot, “we created a business kind of out of thin air,” Eagan says. Ten years later, Hendershot and Eagan’s retail shop — Cartridges Galore, a buy/sell/trade video game small business — has eight locations in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. In 2022, the company sold $6.1 million in video games, proving wrong the naysayers who thought they wouldn’t last.
“The people that want to see Cumberland do better — people who still live here and have invested in downtown — see the big picture and the greater good of this work.”
Knowing that it wouldn’t hurt to have a backup plan in case retro video games were no longer trendy, the business partners decided to expand and invest their success in something bigger. With the incorporation of CG Enterprises LLC, they got into the real estate game.
In 2016, Eagan and Hendershot had already purchased the Perrin Building, where their original Cartridges Galore store and office is located. With the third story of the building vacant, they renovated it and turned it into two luxury apartments. They also did a couple of house flips in the area and started trying their hands at different things in the real estate development world.
“Then our accountant, Zach Hattenfield, told us about The McMullen Building on Baltimore Street in downtown Cumberland,” Eagan says. “There is all this redevelopment and revitalization happening on Baltimore Street — I think it’s upwards of $15 million the city has invested — to reopen this main street that used to be so key and is in all our memories from childhood. We wanted to be a part of that.”
They purchased the four-story building in 2020, making a $3.5 million investment — an investment in the building, their business, and ultimately the community they have loved their whole lives.
The McMullen building has three new tenants going in on the ground floor, including a major chain in the local area, and in March, they opened applications for residents to begin applying to the 13 new luxury apartments. In a week, 11 of the 13 apartments had already filled.
“We were born here, we grew up here, we want to be part of the next step in downtown Cumberland.”
“The reception so far has been really great. The city of Cumberland and the economic development company here have been very supportive,” Eagan says. “The people that want to see Cumberland do better — people who still live here and have invested in downtown — see the big picture and the greater good of this work.”
Eagan knows that the energy around Baltimore Street has changed since they purchased the McMullen Building based on one key metric: “Right around the time that we bought this building, there were about 10 buildings vacant and empty for sale on the street. Now, there’s just one left.”
With the successful redevelopment of the Perrin Building and the McMullen Building, CG Enterprises has recently purchased the Rosenbaum Building as well, housing modern office spaces, shopping and dining, luxury short-term vacation rentals, and luxury apartments.
And even out in Cumberland, Eagan is finding McDaniel and Western Maryland College (WMC) ties. “Laurie Peskin Marchini ’85 is a Cumberland city councilwoman who has been very supportive,” Eagan says. “It turns out, her college roommate Carrie Miller Parker ’85 is the great-great-granddaughter of the original owners of the Rosenbaum Building, and their family has been very supportive throughout the process. It’s cool that this new project has some shared roots in the community I found on the Hill as we try to revitalize our hometown community.”
Eagan says he’s definitely heard some of the talk about he and his business partner being too young as millennials to know what they’re doing or what it takes to be successful. But over the past decade, he says it’s been fun to prove otherwise, because ultimately their greatest measure of success comes down to their desire to bring their hometown back to life.
“We were born here, we grew up here,” Eagan says. “We want to be part of the next step in downtown Cumberland.”