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First of all, Happy New Year. I know we’re already done the first week of the new year, and I haven’t posted my promised story on Silo Ridge yet. The cold snap swooped in here, and sometimes all I want to do is bundle up, light the fireplace, and snuggle with the grand-daughters. (They are getting too big!) But there is cause of excitement–the new restaurant, Monte’s, and as we hinted, the advancing Silo Ridge development.
Perhaps you’ll remember from these pictures, when we were covering our Red Chair event, of the valley seen from the hairpin turn up Rte 44 towards Millbrook. This is the view east we captured (including the Red Chair); it is the vista that the proposed Silo Ridge denizens will call their own. 
The Millbrook Independent covered the news, and I paraphrase:
“Silo Ridge, the (embryo stage) Amenia golf course closed for four years, (it was never truly open) announced …a deal with Discovery Land Company of Scottsdale, Arizona for the development of the golf course and the adjoining land into a resort community.” (!!!!!!!!) (You recall my recent post on the fame of Amenia’s resort status–if not check it out under “Triple Scoops” posted Dec. 13th)
Silo Ridge is proposed to encompass a 20 room lodge, 246 vacation residential properties and… a “world class golf course designed by Tom Fazio to replace the existing one (barely there anyway).” According to wikipedia, “Fazio has designed more than 120 courses and has more courses ranked among the top 100 in the U.S. than anyone else in the business.” He also has designed a number of Discovery’s courses in their roster of Silo-Ridge-like properties.
In their recently issued press release, chairman and CEO of Discovery Land Company, Michael Melman averred, “Preservation of the natural environment and creating contiguous open space has been and will continue to be critical to the execution of the project.”
The same release touted Silo Ridge’s offerings: a children’s program, an activity barn, a giaganto field house with indoor pool, track and field, lacrosse and baseball facilities along with a wide variety of classic games, outdoor experiences and educational opportunities, including arts and crafts, bowling, a movie theater, and video game arcade.”
I guess, in the coming months, Hilltop House Bed and Breakfast might gain some business with the comings and goings up here. That would be great. I think of us as that little find of a place–and many of you agree–a niche of comfort in the Oblong Valley. Silo Ridge will be so enormously (no kidding) different from what are all about. It will transform that side of Route 22 and bring a populace quite different from the people who live in Amenia. Still, it is in keeping with the elite boarding schools that surround us–Kildonan and Maplebrook here, the Kent School to the south, Hotchkiss–the slew of them are listed on our map accessed through our home page. And many of Hilltop’s guests stay with us on their visits to those campuses.
No doubt, it will take time, the transformation of Amenia. The Silo Ridge that was to be never materialized after its round of hype waned to whispers of what was to be that wasn’t. Those acres lay fallow for a long, long time; only so many hay bales will be foresaken in their conversion to sculpted lawns leading up to country homes for the well-to-do. Here, in the bucolic Hudson Valley the newcomers will find not only an inspiring vista, but a certain bounty in our gardens and our pastures, where sustenance farming has oft been the key to survival. It will give those providers a broader market, our families job opportunities, our churches more parishioners, our businesses more customers…and in the trade off, we too may be transformed.
Gives one pause and a reason to look ahead. And that can’t be bad.