An agreement is in place to fill the unused Davis Square Plaza with musicians and other buskers, part of a bigger effort to reclaim the area after years in which a pall has been cast by occasional public substance abuse, violence and camps of unhoused people.
A 25-week Friday concert series called Down in Davis began May 1, and talks are in progress about adding music to the farmers markets that run Wednesdays from this week to Nov. 25 at a parking lot behind the plaza, said Greg Nadeau, president of the Somerville Foundation. Down in Davis has its own set of organizers, but the groups are in communication.
In the plaza activation that could start June 1, it’s not just musicians that could use the space, but circus artists, jugglers, magicians, mimes and others, and organizers’ minds were open to discussion of late-night hours, food stands and the sale of festive items such as glow sticks.
It could be a lot to coordinate, in need of a Davis Square cultural czar.
“I’m looking for a czar volunteer,” Nadeau said on Thursday. “If anyone wants to help creating those systems, I could use the help.”
The concrete expanse of the plaza has been emptied since 2022 by businesses such as restaurants, medical offices and a pawn shop in expectation of a 120,000-square-foot lab redevelopment called 7th Spoke by Asana Partners, of North Carolina. Despite a slowdown in lab projects freezing those plans, the storefronts mostly haven’t been refilled. A pop-up shop for Wild Child Chocolate opened last year on the plaza, Chipotle remains and the Boston Tattoo Co. has slots on each side; a Starbucks at the property closed in September.
As a result, the plaza is almost always empty. Asana has allowed use during the Honk! street band festival and for other activities, though, and in the past few days the company has agreed officially to allow use of the plaza daily for buskers and other creative uses. Organizers have also secured insurance for the space, which came after the licensing agreement with Asana.
Shaping the plaza experience
The fun can go into the evenings until the end of October, said Chris Vining, who is working with Nadeau on the plaza activation. Vining is co-founder of The Goods cannabis dispensary, which is across the street from the plaza. (“Local drug dealer tries to help his community. There you go, there’s the headline,” Vining said.)
Though there is some antideveloper sentiment in Somerville, Vining said, he felt residents should know that Asana was “good to work with,” and he suggested the company was open to further shaping the plaza activation’s hours and allowed uses. “We have a good dialogue going with them. If there was a lot of public sentiment to go later [into the night], maybe that’s a conversation they’ll be willing to entertain.”
Because the plaza is private property, organizers can be nimble around such things as who performs, Vining said. (At the least, “light formality is required” through a centralized schedule, he said.) The expectation is that time slots will be scheduled through a website that has yet to be built, “TBD domain name, TBD everything.”
Getting the word out to the creative community comes next. “We’re not finalized with the internal strategy just yet. Myself and Greg will be putting out into the world sometime this week an announcement,” Vining said. “There’s a lot of people doing a lot of cool things here in Somerville.”
Davis Square Main Streets
Confirmation is pending on whether there can be sales of items in the plaza, whether it be T-shirts or art. If a need arises, organizers hope Asana will be open to tabling such as “an elevated lemonade stand,” but selling food or drink raises questions around licensing. “You might need an approval that takes 60 days. Even though we have great licensing in the city that would be as supportive as possible, we’ve got to follow the law,” Vining said.
The plaza can’t offer electricity, he said.
There may be even more work coming for that Davis Square cultural czar. Nadeau is working on creating a Davis Square Main Streets organization – the city already has such organizations for Union Square and East Somerville – to program and activate the area.
“We’re in the formation process. There needs to be to be an entity to run the Davis Square work, and so the intention is to create that organization and next year have it spin off from the foundation to be its own self-sustaining organization,” Nadeau said. He’s now the president of The Somerville Foundation and nascent Davis Square Main Streets, but said he has “no intention” of keeping leadership of both.
An email was sent Monday to Asana Properties seeking comment.
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