Guest Post by Terrence M.
After an arduous year of waiting, beloved DIY art space and music venue The Garage faces another major setback in its battle with county zoning officials.
In 2025, The Garage, a self-described community-driven art space hosting punk, indie, and other brands of live alternative DIY music on a 77-acre horse farm in Boyds, Maryland, received a cease and desist order after applying for a permit to host their summer music festival, Farm Fest.
The Department of Permitting Services (DPS) initially approved the permit, but unexpectedly followed with a cease and desist order just days later, citing a violation of zoning laws that restrict live music in the Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve, on which The Garage resides.
Grace Cotting and Levi Hebeisen, who founded The Garage in 2023 with the hope of bringing the DIY music scene to rural Montgomery County, followed up with the order in court. Knowing that live concerts and other large-scale events were permitted at various wineries and breweries across the Agricultural Reserve, they attempted to work with DPS over the next year to identify what needed to be changed in order to comply with zoning laws, though ultimately to no avail.
“It’s frustrating… we talked about making every single show donation-based, or fundraisers for various charities,” Hebeisen exclaimed. Followed was some laughter from Cotting, “At one point I copied Butler’s Orchard’s description, and they still rejected it.”
Anxiously running out of options, Cotting and Hebeisen tried profusely to contact and communicate with DPS, but over the course of that year were predominantly met with silence.
“It’s genuinely been so hard to get in contact with them… it has to be through our lawyers, which comes at a high cost to us,” said Cotting.
Finally, on May 19th, roughly one year later, District Court Judge Rand L. Gelber upheld the original violation, and on May 23rd of 2026, the Garage officially announced hiatus until further notice, to an overwhelming air of disappointment and loss.
“Damn this really kills us, you guys have given a platform for so many young upcoming DIY bands, including ourselves,” one Instagram commenter wrote on the Garage’s announcement of closure.
Being a DIY and largely punk and indie rock space, The Garage predominantly finds a sea of alternative and queer youth standing in its crowd, which many speculate has led to what they say feels like prejudicial treatment, particularly as other higher-end businesses continue hosting live music and large-scale events without issue.
“DPS and these law agencies haven’t come to experience what The Garage is. They’re only looking from a distance, and they assume party; they assume it’s just a bunch of people partying and doing drugs, and to us it’s really not that at all,” the co-founders commiserated, “it’s a home to a lot of people.”
The Garage’s closure mirrors that of many other local DIY art spaces across Maryland and the country, as rising costs from gentrification and inflation rapidly outpace diminishing returns, and as local governments crack down on smaller unofficial venues, leaving many queer and alternative youth with fewer and fewer spaces to gather and call home.
“Hogspot, Arts Herndon, The Crown, Joe Squared, you can see it everywhere,” says Hebeisen, citing a variety of local DIY spaces that have succumbed to either financial hardship or regulatory crackdown in recent years.
“The whole point was to make a space in this area,” Cotting said, “Montgomery County should be providing these spaces if they’re going to destroy them.”
The department has been in acknowledgement for years that loose definitions and inconsistent enforcement of agritourism restrictions have left many business owners in a state of uncertainty. Now more than ever, as grief for The Garage’s closure runs high, many are demanding clearer definitions for what constitutes agritourism, as well as for the inclusion of live music and other forms of agricultural entertainment, aptly dubbed “agritainment.”
“How are businesses supposed to survive when the county keeps imposing strict regulations that make it hard for them to grow?” wrote one Instagram user commenting on The Garage’s closure. “These policies are creating unnecessary challenges for local businesses that are trying to succeed and support the community.”
In conjunction with these calls, The Garage has launched a petition asking county representatives to sponsor an amendment to current zoning law that both better defines agritourism and also expands it to include live music as an approved use.
For now, however, The Garage remains on hiatus until further notice. While Cotting and Hebeisen are currently looking into other ways of allowing the community to come and enjoy their open space, the sense that something big is missing in Maryland’s DIY scene is inescapable.
“It’s so crazy to me, if there is such a need for this to be fulfilled, why spend all this money to shut it down instead of redirecting it into somewhere that can be permanent for these people?” says Cotting
“From what I can see, there’s a pretty gaping hole in our community.” concludes Hebeisen.
