Lately, the City of the Big Shoulders has had to flex its muscles, along with most every other burg in the United States. West Pullman in south Chicago has been suffering from urban blight long before the Great Recession. Tucked between Midway and Gary, Indiana’s airports, West Pullman is one of those prairie enclaves replete with vacant industrial parks and for-sale signs on foreclosed houses—

except for a pilot project to produce solar panels that could power-up 1200 homes, a project located right next door to beautiful downtown West Pullman.

Gabriel Spitzer’s interview with energy giant Exelon’s Tom O’Neill isn’t terribly artsy. If this report sometimes sounds cut-and-dry, it’s actually not. O’Neill is heading up what could become “the largest urban solar power plant in the nation.” Gazing out over acres of solar panels, he says the panels look “like a series of conference tables that if you were a little taller you could stand up and put your drink on and talk.”

I’d call that a doozy of an image.

Of course, for Exelon’s project to go from West Pullman to homes all over Hog Butcher Land and elsewhere, significant help will have to come from the city of Chicago, as well as from the feds. Well, things are looking good so far. The time seems riper than ever for a solar energy boom—

and, as everyone knows, you don’t have to be a reporter for Chicago Public Radio’s fabled WBEZ to realize that another term for “solar energy boom” is J-O-Bs.