After three years sitting empty, the former Pemberton Market site at Massachusetts and Rindge avenues is set to become an East Boston Savings Bank branch. (Photo: Erin Stevenson O'Connor)

A long-empty storefront outside Porter Square is set to become a branch of East Boston Savings Bank.

A sign at 2172 Massachusetts Ave.  — next to a Bank of America automated teller at 2168 Massachusetts Ave. — announces the coming bank branch. The bank, which opened in Boston in 1848 and has grown to 24 full-service sites in Everett, Lynn, Medford, Melrose, Peabody, Revere, Saugus, Wakefield and Winthrop, also plans a branch in Danvers. Both are to be open by year’s end, according to a press release quoting Chairman and Chief Executive Richard J. Gavegnano, in what quarterly filings show has already been a good year.

“We’re going to make it more high-tech, using cash recyclers to replace the traditional teller lines. More emphasis will be placed on customer service,” Gavegnano said of the Cambridge site. “Our staff will be multifunctional, able to do everything from teller transactions to opening an account to loan applications.”

There will be a residential and commercial lender at the branch, he said.

“We have made great efforts to increase our market share. We have added branches in key locations in Revere, in West Roxbury and in the South End of Boston. And we have established a new commercial and industrial lending division. This will enhance our presence in all our market areas and add strength to our expanding business platform,” he told the Lynn Journal this week.

The 2,400-square-foot storefront, near the intersection of Massachusetts and Rindge avenues, has plate glass windows revealing rough plywood floors — its condition since shortly after Pemberton Market moved out in June 2008. The market, which replaced a minimart at 2245 Massachusetts Ave., was combined in May into the Pemberton Farms upscale grocer and nursery across Day Street on the avenue. The minimart space remains empty.