Star Store pop-ups mark beginning of reinvented arts hub

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If you were around downtown New Bedford two weeks before Christmas, you might have noticed that the Star Store was looking like it had returned to its old artsy self.

At night, each of the massive upper-floor windows of the 1915 Beaux Arts structure featured a lighted metal wire star, while the first-floor gallery windows once again sported fine art exhibits.  

The Star Store has been reborn after 2½ years as an empty shell thanks to some dedicated folks who are determined to bring back the storied building and its wedding-cake like architecture as a downtown New Bedford arts hub. Specifically, the same group of UMass Dartmouth graduate students who fought so valiantly against the closure of the College of Visual and Performing Arts campus in 2023 have joined up with Matt McArthur, the driving force behind the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston’s six-month-old effort to at least temporarily reopen the city’s architectural anchor as a “living room downtown” for the arts.

On both the Dec. 11 AHA! Night and the Dec. 13 Holiday Stroll, downtown pedestrians and anyone else who might have treasured the longtime department-store-turned-arts-campus could once again take in its creative work, which until mid-January will include sculpture and wall exhibits in the windows, and an astonishingly recreated department-store window installation by Carl Simmons. 

Simmons’ work in the big windows at the corner of Union and Purchase streets is hard to miss and has people talking again about whether New Bedford could once more have a big artists hub in the downtown.

Fallon Navarro, Anis Beigzadeh and Jill McEvoy are the graduates who curated the exhibit. To mark the occasion they screen-printed 200 limited edition T-shirts with the message “Lighting the Star Store,” which had long been known for its striking appearance when its white terracotta walls were lit up against the night sky.

Clearly there is a lot of energy in the city to make this happen. 

The event was a success, with hundreds of folks, many of them artists themselves, returning to the building for the first time since UMass Dartmouth abruptly closed its downtown campus in August of 2023. 

The closure was allegedly over a dispute with state Sen. Mark Montigny over funding and neglected repairs by the university and the former owner, Paul Downey. But close observers of the situation, including the inspector general, have judged that all of the parties had long neglected to perform the upkeep of the building, and failed to take any affirmative action to keep it open. Simply put, the state university system, the school and the state agency in charge of managing buildings wanted out of the New Bedford campus and used the funding dispute as its excuse to leave.

But as of Christmas week, the A&B Council has now embarked on a repair of the Star Store’s long neglected leaky roof. That work is estimated to cost at least $560,000. Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro last year found that neither the university, the state agency in charge of buildings (the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance) or owner Downey ever executed necessary repairs to the building over the course of the 20-year lease during which the campus was located in the city. The state paid Downey millions for the cost of the campus during that time but now the roof, the HVAC system and other structural work needs immediate attention.

And it’s looking like the A&B Council will be able to do what the university and DCAMM said they couldn’t do, and for a lot less than the $75 million UMass Chancellor Mark Fuller claimed it would cost.

The A&B Council is a nonprofit developer of affordable artists’ spaces across the state. Among its successes are a former mill in Lowell (Western Avenue Studios & Lofts) and a former Boys Club in Worcester (Creative Hub Worcester).

McArthur, the A&BC director of real estate and fundraising, says the Star Store is the group’s most exciting project yet, and past claims that it was prohibitively expensive to repair were unfounded.

“I’m in love with this building,” he said. “It’s beautiful. It’s well-built. The work that was done 20-some odd years ago (when the department store was rehabbed as an arts college) is still very valuable.

“The term I use often is embarrassment of riches. If you only read the news you’d think that without 50, 60, 70, whatever the number is, million dollars worth of improvement, it would crumble into the sea. But I can tell you having snooped around every inch of it over the last six months, that’s not the case. The bones are really good. And it’s right in the middle of downtown. There’s so many things about this project that I just don’t think, that I think are underappreciated. Eventually it will be.”

A&BC of Greater Boston currently plans to raise $10 million for the project, McArthur said, although he acknowledged all projects sometimes have unanticipated expenses. The work they know needs to be done includes completely replacing a roof in such poor shape it’s glazed with green stuff and leaking. New ventilation systems, elevators and fire-alarm systems are also on the to-do list. The nonprofit hopes to use state energy rebates to upgrade some of the systems. 

The challenge right now is that the artists and the community want the building open yesterday. But McArthur says an empty structure actually offers a safe and efficient way to do the necessary upgrades safely all at once. So he’s looking more at a permanent re-opening in 2027.

“The pop-ups (December exhibits) went really well. People were happy about them,” he said. “The building functioned as it’s designed. Which is well. The original design was a good design.”

There are spaces in the building, like the first floor, that clearly work immediately, McArthur said. “So it’s impossible for me to ignore that although I might have this more linear concept in my head about how to approach re-activating the building, that there are clearly areas of the property that work immediately.”

The one caveat would be to address the ventilation. But even though A&BC is not ready to officially announce it, he said it’s safe to say there will be more pop-up events in which the Star Store opens to the public during 2026.

Over the past five months, A&BC has already conducted an in-depth survey of what the Greater New Bedford community wants in a revamped Star Store. It has held nine different community engagement sessions in which more than 300 people participated and close to 400 surveys were filled out. 

“Those were opportunities for artists and creators and community members in a variety of artistic disciplines, or not, just members of the public, to participate in conversations about what they’d like to see in the building moving forward,” McArthur said.

What they have come up with is the idea of “A Living Room Downtown.”

What does that mean?

“I think what it means is somewhere where people feel so welcome, that they feel like they can really be their authentic self. And hang out, the same way you would in your living room,” McArthur said. 

Once the sun goes down, for the most part the only place to meet is a restaurant or a bar. “So what are the other options for people to get together and just spend time around other humans?” he asked.
Besides things like exhibition, performance and studio spaces, some of the things suggested by the community include other activities. 

“So you’d come here for a class or a demonstration or a lecture. Not quite as relaxed as a living room but a reason to be here,” he said.

Folks have also talked about sorts of libraries. Lending libraries of written material, of tools and equipment. “There’s been a lot of talk about sharing and reusing materials. Reducing environmental impact of all that waste.”

So what’s next to make sure some of this happens?

Between now and the end of the summer, A&BC will be putting out a simple online request for actual proposals for the building’s use. So an artist would say she’d like a screen-printing studio of say 1,000 square feet. She would provide information on how they would operate it, when they wanted to move in.

Since there will probably be overlapping requests, A&BC will look for spaces where folks can collaborate, being as community-oriented and efficient as possible.

“By the time we get towards the end of the summer, not only will we have completed or be in process for some more of the basics ‘must haves’ for the building like ventilation and elevator upgrades and fire alarm upgrades and all that stuff,” McArthur said, explaining how the two processes that will result in a reopened building will work together. 

The Star Store, located right in the heart of downtown, with its stunning design and history, is like no other project the A&BC has done, McArthur said.

“This is the most exciting project, certainly the most exciting one that we’re working on right now,” he said. “And there will be a long list of reasons why, 15 or 20 years from now, you ask any of us, we’ll say it’s gonna have to be top 3, if not No. 1. It’s incredible.”

“We have a single obligation. And that is to the public,” McArthur said of the nonprofit. “The arrangements that we made, and the thing that ultimately Mayor Mitchell and Paul Downey agreed to, was an agreement, that the only reason this happened was because we committed to bringing new resources to New Bedford, and to turning this building back into a public benefit.”

That means anyone who has a proposal or potential use for the building, the A&BC is listening, he said.

McArthur said he’s making no judgments about the past and will work with any groups that can help realize this downtown arts hub. That includes all the partners, from the political, academic and business worlds, that were a big part of the UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts. 

He particularly praises Downey, who for much of the last year was in a dispute with the city over greatly escalated taxes when the building was reclassified as a for-profit entity. Downey worked out a deal with the city and A&BC that conveyed the Star Store to the nonprofit for $1.  

“Paul didn’t have to do that. And so we’re very grateful that he made the decision to basically find a way to carry through with that commitment,” he said.

“It’s still the nicest $1 building I’ve ever seen,” he said.

McArthur even left the door open for future collaboration with the state and UMass Dartmouth.

“Everybody’s been communicative. Nobody is stonewalling anybody,” he said.

“I do think it’s just a matter of time before some preparation meets opportunity, and folks can get back around the same table,” he said.

None other than Fallon Navarro, who more than anyone led the student opposition to UMD’s plan to shutter the Star Store campus, has said she’s impressed with what A&BC is doing.

“From the conversations we’ve had with Matt and just seeing what’s been happening with the building, how quickly they’re getting it fixed, the community engagement they’re wanting, I think they have the right intentions to get the building fixed, and do right by the community,” she said.

McArthur said he can see that some of the artists have their doubts and are worried that their proposals might not get accepted or that they might miss some sort of deadline and be squeezed out.

“Sometimes I see the anxiety in people’s eyes,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Well, if I don’t get my proposal in now, I’m gonna miss the boat.’”

That will not be the case and the way that A&BC operates their buildings, they are constantly re-evaluating what works and what doesn’t work every year, McArthur said. 

“This is a multi-year project. Not 100%, not nearly 100% of the square footage in the building will open on Day 1. And as we think about even that square footage that’s being opened initially in that first phase, we’re imagining that decisions that are made will not necessarily be the best,” he said. “All plans are wrong, right?”

That’s why the group re-evaluates what’s going in their structures every year. And the plans are tailored to suit both the means and the needs of the artists and the community, he said.

“The advantage of our plan here is that people will be able to engage on an as-needed, or an as-wanted basis. You won’t have to commit a semester at a time, you won’t need to pay tuition, it will be available to you in bite-size, day by day.”

A&BC’s goal is to always keep rents affordable to the arts community. So that is why they are constantly re-evaluating spaces, sharing spaces, even changing spaces and purposes.

It’s an organization that seems to know who it is, and who it is serving.

“One of the problems is that a lot of these UMass Dartmouth students are deeply in debt and struggling to produce their art and making a living at the same time,” McArthur said.

The goal of the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston is nothing less than addressing that problem.

Anyone wishing to contact Matt McArthur about the Star Store can reach him at matt@artsandbusinesscouncil.org or 520-990-5626.

Contact Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org. 

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