Theme park plan as dumb as the dump.

Byline: Chris Sinacola

COLUMN: Sina-cism

When I read about the proposal to create a Walt Disney World-like Pangaea Theme Park in the Douglas woods, I thought Dumbo. Only without the "o."

The notion that a 300-plus parcel of ecologically sensitive land on the Douglas-Webster town line - a spot that is about as middle-of-nowhere as you can get in southern Central Massachusetts - is the right spot for a big amusement park is the most ridiculous idea I've heard since October 1986, when I was minding my business at a Douglas selectmen's meeting one evening and learned that Dedham developer Vincent Barletta had suggested putting a regional landfill in the middle of a 300-plus parcel of ecologically sensitive land on the Douglas-Webster town line.

The area in question was in 1986, as it was in 1886, is now, and - given even a minimum dose of common sense from local and state officials - will be in 2086, an excellent place for frogs and unusual salamanders, avifauna, pine trees, thick brambles, and marshy and mucky spots capable of sucking the boots off your feet before you can say Diplodocus.

In short, build a theme park and there goes Gondwanaland.

It was bad enough that Mr. Barletta - now deceased - felt compelled to cap a perfectly ambivalent career in construction with a proposal to trash some of the most beautiful woods in the Northeast. It was immediately obvious to just about everyone but a handful of local gold diggers that you don't put a big bag of leachate and used diapers on top of fractured bedrock that runs downhill toward a lake with a really long name and expect to win environmental awards or a warm welcome from the Great Spirit when you graduate to the afterlife.

That Mr. Barletta's bad idea reverberated for a decade, costing him and the locals untold time and treasure before the state finally and mercifully subsumed the acreage into the adjoining state forest, is a testament to the determination of some members of homo sapiens to breathe life into obviously dead horses.

In Pangaea's case, it's akin to performing CPR on a dinosaur. Or a dinosaur fossil.

The Pangaea proposal is the product of Paul A. Brogioli of Milford, a former art teacher and commercial artist, who seems really strong on conceptual art, but a bit lacking in the execution department.

A news story in yesterday's Telegram & Gazette informed the public that Mr. Brogioli has floated his theme park idea before, in Holland a decade ago. Holland, Massachusetts, as it turns out, although it might as well have been in Holland, or Switzerland, or Myanmar, or any other place around the globe, for all the reality it represents.

In addition to Douglas, Mr. Brogioli is reported to have a third, undisclosed location in mind. He won't say what it is. I'm guessing it's Erewhon.

To paraphrase the famous public-service radio spot, had this been an actual theme park proposal, you could have stood in line for Dinosaur Land, marveled at a recreated Viking ship, and visited a house of holograms.

Holograms would be most appropriate, since they appear to show objects in three dimensions that are not actually there.

Moreover, I have never understood the point of "developing" woodlands into petting zoos, as if wildlife have a lesser claim to Earth than the miserable denizens of a petting zoo. Nor do I see value in endangering the character of an old New England town for the purpose of creating "a lived-in, worked-in historical village of each of the 13 original Colonies," as the paper reported.

When I want to see historical villages in the various Colonies, I saddle up my fossil-fuel horse and cross the mighty Hudson to visit actual historical villages in actual former Colonies.

The most amusing statistic on offer is the claim that Pangaea would draw 8 million visitors annually to Douglas. This recalls the claims of tourism officials that millions of visitors stop by the Blackstone Valley annually.

I've been to pretty much all the Valley's hot spots at the height of the alleged tourist season, and the crowds do not approach seven digits. Unless we're talking about Lilliputians, and if we are, my eyesight isn't that good.

Mr. Brogioli may prove me wrong, build his Pangaea, and carry Central Massachusetts to a new era of historic/prehistoric prosperity. My guess, however, is we'll see a slow drift toward a small strip mall with a mini-golf course and ice cream stand. As Mickey Mouse as that sounds.

Contact Chris Sinacola by e-mail at [e-mail].