they couldn’t move, because they were
all selling for between $400,000 and
$700,000,” Darling says. Postgreen,
meanwhile, sold their third and fourth
houses before they could even be listed,
and the company has gone on to launch
four more ecofriendly projects, with
ever-loftier environmental goals.
Postgreen and scads of other envi-
ronmentally minded, housing-related
businesses saw potential in Philadel-
phia before the city’s own government
took action. For example, Greenable, a
purveyor of ecofriendly building mate-
rials, has been running a design studio
showroom in Old City since 2006, and
local architects BluPath Design have
been designing green buildings in the
area since 2003. But with the inception
of Greenworks Philadelphia, Mayor
Michael A. Nutter’s plan to make Phila-
delphia the greenest city in America by
2015—no less than a decade and a half
sooner than the goals of most other
urban areas—the city’s path forward is
now a matter of policy (see sidebar).
Staying Lean Helps Sell Green
In Philly’s Northern Liberties neigh-
borhood, Greenable recently opened
a new, 3,500-square-foot warehouse
showroom that stocks ecofriendly
cleaning products, composters, worm
bins, paints, countertops, backsplashes,
flooring, denim insulation, bamboo
plywood, windows, lighting and more—
and it is staffed by just four people.
