New Nizhny: Cup makes gun city a tourist spot
NIZHNYNOVGOROD: “We are usually a very quiet city. We wake up, go to work, return home and go to sleep,” said Sveta as she and her partner Aleksandr drove this reporter from the Strigino airport on Thursday morning to their guesthouse in Vavilova where they have been hosting visitors during the World Cup.
Till the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nizhny Novgorod didn’t permit foreign visitors to help maintain the secrecy of its weapon-producing units.
With the start of the World Cup, business has been more hectic than usual in Russia’s fifth largest city. There is renewed hope that being a host venue will help drive the economy beyond the more dominant sectors of automobiles, information technology and weapon-making. The hospitality sector has been the biggest beneficiary as thousands of fans keep pouring into the city that will host its last game of the competition on July 6, a quarter-final. “We have never seen as many people as we have in the last one week. Business has been good for the last few days and we expect the number of customers to keep rising till the first week of July,” said Andreyeva, who runs a restaurant a couple of kilometers away from the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium.
As per various estimates, more than $1 billion has been invested in preparing Nizhny for the tournament. A new stadium, a renovated airport, a renovated railway station and new roads are among the most prominent infrastructural additions to the city.
Igor Norenkov, the local minister of economic development and investment, predicted before the World Cup that the tournament would generate ‘six to seven billion rubles of extra income’ for the region.
“That is one percent of the Gross Regional Product. We will be able to review the results in the first quarter of next year,” Norenkov claimed.
It remains to be seen how true Norenkov’s figures turn out to be but questions remain over the long-term implications on the city’s economy. The new 45,000-capacity stadium, hosting six World Cup games, cost an estimated $300 million. The stadium, built on the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers, has also led to a rise in river cruises.
With the stadium set to host FC Olimpiyets — an outfit struggling in the second tier of the national league pyramid — later, questions remain about its utility once the tournament is over. That said, the enthusiasm among locals remain high over the impact of the tournament on the economy.
“The city looks so different today from what it was 10 years back. Yes, we may not be in a position to say how much we are going to benefit economically but if you are talking about long-term profits for us, the new infrastructure will not collapse once the World Cup ends. The airport, the railway stations won’t become smaller like they were a few years back,” said Dimitry, a local resident who had arrived at the stadium three hours prior to Argentina’s game against Croatia.