When the Imereti lowland was chosen as a construction site for future Olympic venues for the Sochi Winter games in 2014, almost every corner was carefully surveyed and that's when this part of history was rediscovered.
Proof of the positive results of the discussions of Sochi’s investment attractiveness was quite around the corner. Even though it’s more than three years to go before the start of the Winter Olympic Games-2014, the city and the nearby territory is dotted with construction sites. Contractors work day and night, and the frames of some of huge constructions to be commissioned already next year and in 2012 look quite impressive. The region has made an emphasis on Sochi’s charm as a Black Sea resort city as well as development of its infrastructure and transport.
“Sochi has always been an investor’s attraction and it remains such especially now that we are getting ready for the Winter Olympic Games. With the amount of attention our government pays to this project, I think investors can be sure of tomorrow,” said Sochi’s Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov.
Sponsorship revenues are already over $1.0 billion, making Sochi by far the most successful winter Games organising committee in that respect, and even look likely to surpass Beijing's $1.2 billion domestic sponsorship revenue mark for its much bigger 2008 summer Games.
"It is true we have exceeded our (sponsorship) plans but we have now established new plans," [Games chief Dmitiry] Chernyshenko told Reuters a day before the start of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) coordination commission visit to monitor progress.
"The main heritage of the Olympics is that ecological problems will be resolved. We have been eliminating dumps, launching an incinerator, and will resolve the issue of polluted water run-off into the sea," Kozak told reporters during a working visit to Sochi.
Last week, the head of the city's ecological council was quoted by Russian daily Novaya Gazeta as saying that the ecological situation in Sochi had worsened significantly over the past six months mainly because of the growing number of cars and increasing construction pace combined with the absence of full-fledged environmental protection measures.
The terminal is the first major facility commissioned for the games and ticks off a box on Russia’s long to-do list in preparation for the event.
The new terminal is fully operational and services both domestic and international flights. It boasts the latest know-how in ecological and resource efficiency and the most modern equipment, the company said in a statement.
Spending to build roads and bridges for the 2014 Sochi Olympics has already peaked, he said, as the projects are slated to be operational in 2012.
Despite the impressive size of Russia's road construction market, it has no foreign contractors because of the high entry barriers, Mozalyov said.
It means the construction of a new winter community in the North Caucasus mountains, the construction of 300 kilometres of roads, 100km of rail, 39 tunnels and 24 thermal and hydro power stations.
"We are well on track," asserts Mr Chernyshenko, a native of Sochi who was handed the games' baton five years ago.
"Our construction site is now probably competing in terms of size with London's," he says.
With four years still to go, that figure will dwarf overall spend for Canada's Vancouver Olympics of about £3.5bn.
The 2014 Games in Sochi, on Russia's southwestern coast, are already dogged by massive controversy and allegations of corruption.
Many homes are in the process of being demolished to make way for the six-stadia Olympic Park.
The Novaya Gazeta story focuses on Vladimir Leshchevsky, deputy of construction in the Kremlin's Office of Presidential Affairs – a vast empire that owns about $500 billion worth of former Soviet Communist Party property. It alleges that he took about $5.7 million in kickbacks from the Moskonversprom consortium of construction companies in connection with the renovation of two Kremlin-owned Sochi area sanitoriums.
"To really fight corruption he would have to fire [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin, who is at the center of the Sochi Olympic scandal, but that's not going to happen," says Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and a leader of the liberal opposition who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Sochi in polls last year that some criticized as Kremlin-manipulated. "So he orders an investigation of Leshchevsky, a nobody. It's just a PR action."
Re-settlement of town residents whose houses are to be demolished and lands withdrawn during construction works will cost an extra 12 billion rubles (395.6 million dollars).
He added this was only a preliminary estimation at the moment, as "a great number" of problems remains in place, including customs and border control issues.
Corruption in Russia has made road-building so expensive that the same stretches of highway could be coated in an eight-inch thick layer of foie gras for the same price, a study has found.
The decision to publish the bizarre calculation in the Russian edition of Esquire magazine was designed to embarrass the Kremlin, which has failed to tackle endemic corruption in the industry. The magazine used one road, being built for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the southern town of Sochi, as an example. The price tag for the 50-kilo-metre long road is $7.8 billion Cdn, more than the entire costs of the Vancouver Olympics including the upgrades to the Sea to Sky Highway.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/road+Sochi+costs+billion+corruption/3308038/story.html#ixzz0uQmjuj5a
Russian Railways is speeding up construction of the main infrastructure project for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi – the combined road and rail route linking Adler and the Alpika-Service mountain resort.
In line with requirements set down by the International Olympic Committee, Russian Railways’ contractors are carrying out tunneling work at six tunnel complexes on the mountain route. To date, servicing-evacuation tunnels have been created at complex No. 1, complex No. 5, and rail tunnel No. 2. Work on the other tunnels is proceeding on schedule.
Q: What's new in Sochi?
Bodesteiner: When I went there two years ago, it was a really small little mountain town up a pretty narrow mountain valley. I swear there must have been about 800 people living there with old houses and without any kind of resort at all up there. Now, going back, you can see it's going to be a huge transformation. There's tons of construction going on right now everywhere you go with thousands of workers and trucks. They're building a world class ski resort which is going to have great skiing. The mountains are all being connected by peak to peak gondolas on two sides of the valley. Down along the river they're doing great development of about two dozen high-end hotels. That's going to basically be the heartbeat of the Olympics because along the river corridor are the mountain venues up at the top of the ski area, then the resort village and down at the bottom of the river valley in Sochi are the ice arenas. They're actually at the end of Sochi, about an hour from downtown in normal traffic. So really I think the action is going to be up in skiing and snowboarding venue at Rosa Khutor.
Russian Railways is building a rail line from Adler to Sochi Airport. The new intermodal line will ensure comfortable high-speed transport for guests and participants at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The estimated capacity of the line will be more than 86,000 people per day, or up to 60% of all air passengers travelling to the Olympics. The line is scheduled to be launched in 2012.