The Star Store began as a humble dry goods shop in New Bedford’s whaling era, evolved into a grand downtown department store that died when the malls arrived, and re-emerged as a state arts college, only to close abruptly in 2023 with little notice.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell recalled this winding history as he announced his latest plan to save the Star Store at a press conference on Monday in one of the building’s former art galleries.
The Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston will reopen the building as an arts center with work studios, classrooms, galleries, and the possibility for ground-floor retail, Mitchell said. The Boston-based nonprofit purchased the Star Store late last week for $1.
“This building is no longer in limbo,” Mitchell said. “There is Boston money that’s going to be invested in here.”
Matt McArthur, the nonprofit’s director of real estate and fundraising, said he will co-lead a community engagement process to figure out the building’s layout with Margo Saulnier, the New Bedford Economic Development Council’s director of creative strategies and art-based initiatives.
Addressing the many artists in attendance, McArthur said he and Saulnier will be listening “to make sure that what we steward back into this building is what you all actually want and need.”
“We are going to turn this building into a nationally recognized example of how a municipality, a nonprofit organization and community can all come together and support the creative people that make this city great,” McArthur said.
It will cost at least $4 million to replace the Star Store’s roof and update the elevators, fire alarms and air conditioners, according to preliminary calculations that McArthur shared. He said he hopes the renovation will take less than a year-and-a-half.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said public funding for the project is a possibility, but the Arts & Business Council has completed similar projects with mostly private funding.
Noticeably absent from the press conference was State Sen. Mark Montigny, who has described the Star Store’s conversion into an arts college as one of the proudest achievements of his legislative career.
Montigny, who filed the legislation that created the campus in 1996, wound up pulling its funding in 2023 during a dispute over long-term ownership plans with UMass Dartmouth officials, state property managers, and the Star Store’s former private owner.
Montigny did not respond to an emailed question about his absence at Monday’s announcement.
At the podium, Mitchell said he and city officials from his legal department and the New Bedford Economic Development Council picked up the pieces after the Star Store’s abrupt closure.
“We don’t shy from responsibility,” Mitchell said, “even when it’s easy to say it’s somebody else’s fault.”
Mitchell’s administration spent the intervening years ramping up pressure on the Star Store’s former owner, Paul Downey, to find a public-facing use for the building. City assessors revoked a tax break for the property, spiking the annual bill from $45,000 to $543,000. Downey wound up owing more than $800,000 in unpaid taxes.
The city recently settled with Downey, who paid closer to $502,000 in unpaid taxes as he transferred ownership for $1 to the Arts & Business Council, according to City Solicitor Eric Jaikes.
Planning the Star Store’s future
McArthur, the real estate director from the Arts & Business Council, said local artists should sign up online at a new website to get involved in the planning process.
“Tell us a little bit about what you make, give us your email, and so begins the process of us engaging with you to figure out exactly what to put back here,” McArthur said.
Many artists returned to the Star Store for Monday’s press conference. Fallon Navarro, a former ceramics graduate student at UMass Dartmouth, found some of the decorations she put up for her thesis exhibit were still intact.
“I’m really hopeful about it,” Navarro said of the redevelopment plans. “Anything other than it being shut down is a benefit for everyone in the community.”
Navarro and her old classmate, Anis Beigzadeh, said they planned to rent space if and when the Star Store reopens. Beigzadeh described feeling both “excited” and “weird” about returning to the Star Store after such a difficult goodbye two years ago.
“It’s like you come back to your home again,” Beigzadeh said.
