The old South Boston Savings Bank, located at 460 West Broadway, may soon join the ever-growing list of buildings you’ve walked past for years that are now high-end apartments.

The owners, David Matteo and David Winick of Cedarwood Development, plan to maintain the West Broadway-facing and convert the current structure into the new South Boston Municipal Courthouse location. 

Three stories will be added to serve as 20 new studio, one, and two-bedroom apartments, totalling 34 bedrooms. The residencies will open onto Athens Street.

A basement garage will provide 20 parking spots, to be shared between residents and courthouse employees. It will also have limited electrical vehicle charging ports and a bike room. 

At the March 11 community meeting about the project, locals were unhappy with another “ugly” and “unaffordable” apartment complex that could not support families coming to the neighborhood. 

One resident, Linda Kavanich, called the construction disrespectful to Southie. “It looks cheap, and it is cheap,” she said. “Could you at least respect the architectural history of our neighborhood if we’re going to be doing these projects?” 

Kavanich was additionally skeptical of moving the courthouse, questioning how, after five years of looking for a new location, the city could not identify any of its own property in the Southie on which to build a new one. She asked Cedarwood how much they were looking for in rent from the city, to which a concrete answer was not available.

“One of the challenges with this project in general is getting it to pencil out, to be able even to get it financed,” said Matteo, adding that they did not, at this time, even know how much space the municipal court was looking for. “We need to balance that with the residential component, which is also kind of more of a wild card.”

“It doesn’t appear as though the filing should have moved forward at this point, because [Matteo] and [Winick] don’t have the answers that the community and the neighborhood are looking for,” said City Point Neighborhood Association Luanne O’Connor. “We can’t really come out and make suggestions or have positive conversation because none of our questions can be answered.”

While O’Connor did speak favorably of redeveloping the bank into office space for the courthouse, she called the residential addition “extreme” and suggested that due to the long-term leases for municipal buildings, using the space to house more city and state offices would make for a better financial plan.

“If the usage of the courthouse can remain just for the courthouse and office space, and you take that much care and design, as you did in Andrew square… I think that would be a great thing,” O’Connor said. 

Parking and traffic congestion also came into question. If we assume every resident brings a car, there would need to be 34 spots for them to park, and that is before considering spots used by court employees and private citizens utilizing the court.

At the East Broadway location, there is reserved parking for employees and restricted street parking for court use out front, which is unclear, though unlikely, West Broadway could replicate under this plan.

The only voices totally in favor of the project seemed to be those standing to make money off of it. Thomas Pecoraro, a business agent with Iron Workers Local 7 loved the project and said that the bank is “begging to be reused [for] something like this.” 

“Rise in favor of this project as a Boston resident and on behalf of all the rest of the Boston residents in Local 7,” he said.

The period for public comment will close March 17, though Cedarwood and the city agreed to extend by at least a week. Following this period, the project will require board approval before beginning construction.

Comments on the development can be left here.

You can see the details of the plan here.