Celebrate with fireworks!

If we weren’t so distracted by the incessant pounding of the latest COVID-19 toll, this would be a time for celebratory fireworks on Longboat Key.

The Chuck Whittall-Andy Adams standoff is over!

And barring another pandemic, Whittall’s vision and promise of developing a gleaming St. Regis Hotel on the site of the famed Colony Beach & Tennis Resort, at long, long last, appears more real and more of a certainty than ever before.

Ring the church bells. Pop the champagne. Shoot off the fireworks. In fact, shoot them off from the late Murf Klauber’s prized Makepeace groin and pier at the Colony beach.

Not only for Whittall and his Unicorp National Developments Corp., but also for the Colony’s long-suffering owners and the citizens of Longboat Key, this is great news.

We needed this. Indeed, we’ll take any good economic news we can get.

Just when you were beaten into the dour reality that we’re now facing a slow, painful economic recovery, the Whittall-Adams agreement will shoot a strong boost of optimism up and down Gulf of Mexico Drive.