A pop-up art gallery will fill the space of a Starbucks coffee shop that closed a year ago in Somerville’s Davis Square, said its operator and curator, Susan Berstler of the Nave Gallery, and the Somerville Arts and Culture department.
The nonprofit art space will run on a volunteer model similar to the Nave Gallery with a goal to “highlight our rich artists’ community,” Berstler said Sept. 2. The gallery is also “an attempt to bring some energy back into Davis, which I think everyone agrees is needed.”
The keys were handed over to Berstler on Sept. 1 under a short-term lease the city signed with the developer and property owner Asana, Berstler said. Art gallery furniture has begun to be moved into the space, obscuring paper has come down from the windows and passersby are peeking inside to see the progress.
The space is part of property bought by Asana of North Carolina to become a 120,000-square-foot, labs-focused redevelopment project called 7th Spoke. Businesses closed or relocated for what was expected to be 14 months of construction starting in 2022. The labs market collapsed, though, freezing plans in place.
The problem of empty storefronts in Davis Square – including some from a proposed residential and retail project down the street that has since collapsed – worsened in September 2025 when Starbucks announced it would close more than 400 U.S. and Canadian stores, including more than 20 in Massachusetts. Four of those were in Cambridge and Somerville, including the one at 260 Elm St.
The coffee shop space has been empty since, even as The Somerville Foundation and others began working five months ago to revive Davis Square by activating spaces that had gone quiet under a retail pall, as well as a reputation for public drug use and camps of the homeless. The square’s Statue Park has hosted 25 free “Down in Davis” concerts, and there have been around 40 events in Asana’s Davis Square Plaza, including musical performances, secondhand clothing sellers and a Fifa World Cup soccer watch party, the group says.
The Starbucks opens up to a patio on the plaza, raising the possibility of merged efforts.
“We have a long history of activating vacant spaces via art, and I know the mayor and his team are excited to see this project come to Davis Square. We are thrilled to be working with Susan on this! She also has a long and amazing history of bringing art to vacant spaces, especially in Davis Square,” said Rachel Strutt of Somerville Arts and Culture in a Sept. 2 email.
The Nave Gallery opened in Teele Square in 2004 as a project of ARTSomerville, a nonprofit volunteer group of artists and arts enthusiasts. It is hosted in the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church at 155 Powder House Blvd.; for four years beginning in 2013 the Nave Gallery ran a Nave Annex at 53 Chester St., a home that has been torn down to be rebuilt into three condominiums over a commercial space.
