BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION, JULY 14-16, 2017) — THE PLANET has learned of a private investor, the Galloping Ghost, who has a great idea for the ghost-town PEDA property. He wants to put a ski resort built around Hill 78. That’s the monstrous mountain of the worst industrial toxins imaginable rising from the depths in PEDA’s vicinity.

How high the moon? Slightly higher than Hill 78. We’re not saying it’s tall, but the resort, to be called  Hotel on the Toxic Slope (HOTS), will offer Sherpa guides to those who wish to scale the summit. These will be from the same Sherpas who now guide winter visitors to “bustling” downtown Pittsfield over the slopes left at curbside after the snows of yesterday.

HOTS will offer rooms beginning at $500 a night. This includes hot and cold running water on each floor as well as a complimentary Pop Tart breakfast. Skeptics may claim HOTS won’t outdraw the Hotel on North (HON) foot traffic — mainly gang members, derelicts, and the drug trade — and thus miss out on the gun play there. The Galloping Ghost, however, plans to counteract that by offering an adjacent shooting range. Local public office holders (POH) will serve as targets for live gunfire.

Unlike The Beacon Cinema, Nuclea, Workshop Live, EV Worldwide and otherwise successful  “investments” of taxpayer dollars, HOTS will be built with private money.  The business plan excludes any participation from local officials, guaranteeing its success.  As for zoning regulations and environmental concerns for building on top of a pile of poison (POP), The Ghost cites precedent of grammar school next door to Hill 78. City officials still think that’s a great location for the POP.

HOTS promises to be the most exciting development for PEDA since Corydon Thurston showed up at the office one day to play solitaire for an hour. At PEDA, computer solitaire is considered “aggressive marketing” of the 52 acres,, centrally located, next to a lake, and with rail lines. PEDA has been around since 1998, since that fateful day when Gerry Doyle, Tom Hickey, and a disbarred lawyer named Murray de la Bowery met over the negotiating table with the top corporate lawyers employed by General Electric Company. Pittsfield took GE to the cleaners, hoodwinking GE into leaving the 52 acres full of poisons, still needing remediation by any company stupid enough to build there. Oh, and to add to the highway robbery, the city also made GE throw in $100 for “business development and tax relief.” As Pittsfield pols bragged, “We skinned them alive.”

The Galloping Ghost expects ground-breaking for HOTS to “immediately follow” the approval of a Walmart Superstore at PEDA.  The HOTS site plan includes skiing directly out of your room and into the new Walmart, a feature that shall be billed as “America’s Most Convenient Shopping.” Even the cynics have to admit it’s a step up from the current situation. In case you have forgotten, Pittsfield now has what Forbes magazine dubbed America’s worst Walmart.

THE PLANET contacted HON executives, asking them if they were concerned that HOTS will be taking away business. On the record, they had nothing to say. Off the record, they told us, “Business? What business?” They then confirmed plans to follow The Beacon’s lead, cutting capacity in half and calling it an “expansion.”

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“The quality of mercy is not strained” — William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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