The green revolution may be a much-ballyhooed fixture with architectural, engineering and construction cognoscenti, but what happens when the revolution actually arrives on the doorstep of the traditional blue collar, Irish Catholic, family-oriented stronghold of South Boston? Wicked Delicate Films' production of The Greening of Southie successfully explores that theme with a hip blend of time-lapse photography, great music and on-point dialogue as a young management team leads skeptical tradesmen through the experience of assembling an 11-story, 144 unit condominium project called the Macallen Building.
Southie, of course, is best known for fighting school integration and Irish mobsters. But it also has benefited from the $15-billion Central Artery/Tunnel project, better known as the Big Dig, which transformed an area of old warehouses and clannish neighbors into a hot, trendy and very valuable piece of real estate. The spin-off is dynamic new development such as the Macallen Building, the first LEED certified residential structure in Boston, and Gold at that. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is a rating system established by the U.S. Green Building Council to measure the green performance of buildings, which can be either silver, gold or platinum.