BOSTON—The Owl Station Bar & Bistro offers sushi and tempura to young city dwellers living in the pricey condos and apartments mushrooming around South Boston.
Decades ago, the spot played a different role: Feared gangster James "Whitey" Bulger held court in the same location, then a dive bar known as Triple O's.
Mr. Bulger was convicted Monday on sweeping federal racketeering charges nearly 20 years after he fled Boston to escape an indictment. The trial recalled the blight and danger of the old South Boston, when a crumbling, postindustrial waterfront isolated the neighborhood, a cloistered, largely Irish population held its problems close, and corrupt law enforcement allowed Mr. Bulger to flourish.
"Surely, that era ended a long time ago," said Bill Linehan, 62, a lifelong resident who represents the neighborhood on Boston City Council.
The memories of Mr. Bulger's violent reign—and the myth that he acted as a kind of Robin Hood amid social and racial unrest—are slowly eroding. Still, the neighborhood he ruled, known as "Southie," is a study in contrasts, a place where trendy restaurants pop up next to housing projects, drug use remains a serious problem, and the abduction and murder of a young woman recently shook the community.
"I think [South Boston] is on the upswing, but there's a lot of work to be done," said Marwan Mostafa, who works at a moving company in the neighborhood's Andrew Square, where police and neighbors say drug problems are particularly prevalent.
Mr. Bulger, now 83 years old, grew up in a housing project nearby. The federal jury found he participated in 11 murders in the 1970s and 1980s while running a criminal operation of extortion, money-laundering and drug-dealing.
Despite South Boston's gritty past and uneven present, new residents are streaming in. The neighborhood's population swelled to 35,200 by 2010, up nearly 12% from 2000, according to U.S. Census data and the Boston Redevelopment Authority. That reversed a trend seen between 1950 and 1970, when the population shrank by nearly a third, according to a city report.
Older residents welcome the newcomers, but with some trepidation. Linda Zablocki, who heads the Andrew Square Civic Association and has lived there most of her life, said her 81-year-old mother has seen her property taxes triple through reassessments.
"The town has become a 'Tale of Two Cities,' " said Ray Flynn, Boston's mayor from 1984 to 1993 and a lifelong Southie resident. "Young professionals who buy luxury [condos] and frequent the trendy bars, and working-class families who feel they are losing their neighborhood."
Two doors down from the site of Mr. Bulger's old bar, young women filed into a yoga studio Thursday morning, mats slung over their shoulders. On the same block, a new apartment building lists a sixth-floor, two-bedroom unit for as much as $4,553 a month. On the ground floor, Social Wines sells "curated craft beer & spirits."
Dwellings catering to young professionals have cropped up around the Broadway subway station, just one stop from the city's financial district. But beyond the cluster of new buildings, the neighborhood retains an industrial edginess.
Mr. Flynn, now 74, said he is particularly worried about the drug problem. Like many cities, Boston is caught in a nationwide heroin problem, fueled by cheap and available product, and the South Boston neighborhood is taking a particularly hard hit.
Indeed, South Boston averaged 48.4 substance-abuse deaths per 100,000 residents between 2005 and 2010, outpacing the citywide rate, according to the most recent data from the Boston Public Health Commission.
The neighborhood typically has one of the city's highest death rates for opiates, according to Rita Nieves, who directs the health commission's bureau of addictions prevention, treatment and recovery support services. There were five suspected overdose deaths in South Boston and a neighboring community in about a week's time in July.
Keith Lombard, 38, a former heroin addict, is now a case manager and counselor at the South Boston Collaborative Center, which helps addicts from an office in the housing project where he grew up. He thinks the community's insular mind-set allowed drug problems to metastasize, since people tried to keep problems locked up at home, rather than seeking outside help. But this is changing, he said.
Mr. Linehan, the city councilman, wants a levy on alcohol and pain pills to raise more money for addiction treatment.
He said there are discussions about grandfathering in older residents to protect them from rising tax bills. Not everyone wants to cash out and leave Southie behind, he noted, which means the old and new will have to live together.
"I refuse to sell my house," he said. "I don't care how much that it's worth."
