The changing face of Davis Square

The poster is nestled in the bottom right corner of a sleek glass window in Davis Square. Two silhouettes dance together as the sun sets behind them. “I miss Johnny D’s,” says one of the figures, answered only with a nostalgic “Yeah.”

Johnny D’s Uptown Restaurant and Music Clubclosed in 2016, after the longtime owner Carla DeLellis thought “it was time for a change”, according to The Boston Globe. The restaurant opened in 1969, during Bob Dylan’s heyday, and the same truth once expressed by Dylan still holds out: “The times they are a-changin’.”

A four story mixed-use development building is now being built where Johnny D’s once stood. As reported by Eater Boston, the building, still owned by DeLellis, will house a sushi, poke and raw juice bar called Waikiki and have several floors of apartments up above. More construction is soon to follow. The Dailyreported last Friday that the British-based student housing developer, Scape, purchased a half-block of properties along Elm Street and Grove Street, in the heart of Davis Square. 

Now the square faces crucial questions: how does it maintain its unique sense of place amidst all these changes? How can Davis Square evolve in a constantly evolving world, yet stay true to what it is?

In terms of the changes seen in Davis Square, Stephen Mackey, the president and CEO of the Somerville Chamber of Commerce, said he views them as something of an inevitability.

“I mean, over 30 years you’re going to see significant change anywhere,” Mackey said.

Mackey is a lifelong Somerville resident and has been president of the Chamber of Commerce since 1995. When he took over, he and his team tried to figure out what the future of Somerville might look like. 

“In the mid 1990s, there was a strong societal shift towards urban resurgence, but Somerville still had this reputation of urban decay. We wanted to reframe how people thought about it,” Mackey said.

That came in the way of three key characteristics of Somerville’s location: Somerville is the most densely populated city in New England, it’s closer to downtown Boston than most of Boston, and it sits in the middle of the "brain power triangle" of Tufts University, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon reframing, Mackey thought the city needed something to bring people into it.

“We needed a hook. We weren’t the life sciences capital like Cambridge. We weren’t the political capital like Boston. But at the time, Davis Square had Johnny D’s, Redbones and Somerville Theatre, so maybe we could be the dining and nightlife capital," Mackey said.

As more people and more money have flowed into Davis Square, its dining and nightlife scene has continued to evolve. Some restaurants have taken the route of refurbishing old Davis Square institutions, paying homage to a deep history while adapting to a new time. Sacco’s Bowl Haven at Flatbread Somerville exemplifies one such evolution. 

Katie Biggs, a managing partner of Flatbread Company Inc., offered a history of the organic pizzeria/bowling alley combination. 

“Sacco’s Bowl Haven opened in 1939, with candlepin bowling, a New England tradition. It was family owned between the Sacco family and one other family, and then in 2010, they were selling it and a lot of people were looking to buy it. [The potential purchasers] were going to level it and do all condos, or retail on the bottom and condos up top. A lot of people in the community were very against this kind of development," Biggs said.

Biggs said that the owners of Flatbread Company came in and wanted to maintain the bowling alley.

“The two founders, Johnny and Jay, found out about Sacco’s and heard about what the developers were trying to do. [The Sacco family] put their blood, sweat and tears into this place. Their whole family had since 1939. They didn’t want it to just get destroyed. So Flatbread told them ‘we’ll buy it and keep it true to its roots.’ That’s why the family ended up selling it to Flatbread, because we were the only ones willing to keep it what it was," she said.

To this day, Flatbread maintains a good relationship with the Sacco family and seeks to maintain and build a relationship with the Davis Square community.

“We still get Joe Sacco, the grandson, he’ll come in once or twice a year and he’s always so happy that we kept it going. It was a family operation and then we moved in, but it’s an institution in the community and we tried to keep it that way," Biggs said.

According to some of their patrons, they’ve succeeded.

“We still have people nine years later come in and they’re like ‘I’m so glad that you guys kept it the way it is,’ because they know that they were trying to put condos here … [and] you do see a lot of landmarks disappearing, like Johnny D’s, like Ryles in Inman Square,” Biggs said.

Biggs finds that Flatbread Company, though a chain with 16 stores from Hawaii to Maine, can resist becoming a generic chain because each store allows itself to be transformed by the community it inhabits.

“Different stores have a different community so it’s a different vibe [at each one]. We just want to keep it a natural spot for whatever community we’re in,” she said.

Similarly, Mackey sees the local community as a shield that can maintain  Davis Square’s sense of self.

“Of course there’s a fear of losing character [with development]. It can happen, but it’s less likely to happen in Davis Square than what has happened in parts of Harvard Square because the parcels are smaller and so much more of Davis Square immediately abuts residential development, so you have to be more sensitive," he said.

Mackey doesn’t know what lies ahead with the introduction of student housing developer Scape, but views it optimistically.

“It’s exciting that Somerville is getting attention from all over the world, but we haven’t seen the proposal yet and need to make sure the proposal maintains the commercial engine of Davis Square on Elm Street," Mackey said.

What we do know is that, in the words of another 1960s musician, a change is gonna come to Davis Square, one way or another.