Seaside city bets on big makeover
Once a staid seaside resort in the Soviet Union, this frontier city has undergone an extreme facelift, the legacy of former president Mikhail Saakashvili’s determination to give Georgia a more contemporary, jazzier look.
Three years after Saakashvili left office and the country, Batumi, like other Georgian cities, bears his mark. Its skyline is a bizarre mash-up of architectural styles, including sleek modern and Disneyland whimsical, crowding out the two-storey, 19th-century buildings with ornate balconies that once defined this city of 120,000. Although some parts of historic Batumi have been preserved, dozens of old buildings have been swept away in the rush to welcome new investors, hotels and, especially, casinos. The post office, a city landmark, has been transformed, its art nouveau interior destroyed. Smaller houses have been torn down, despite protests from a group of citizens.
“We are fighting house by house,” said Shota Gujabidze, a film director and author of a book on old Batumi. “But it is very difficult to fight when the authorities have all the power. You can go out on the street and shout, but nothing happens.”
Elected in 2004 on the wave of Georgia’s Rose Revolution, Saakashvili set out to uproot corruption and other bad habits left over from the Soviet era.
New police stations were built with glass exteriors, symbols of the transparency that the young, U.S.educated president was looking to promote throughout government.
His architectural ambitions were seemingly unlimited, especially in Batumi, just 20 kilometres from the Turkish border, which he hoped to turn into a vacation destination. New buildings shot up along a seaside promenade that was once patrolled by armed Soviet border guards, and private investors piled on, adding an Italian tower, a Greek temple and a tilting White House to the architectural hodgepodge.
Tourists are flocking to Batumi, but not so much for the beaches. Casinos here are sprouting like mushrooms, drawing an estimated 400,000 visitors last year, mainly from Turkey, where gambling is illegal.
According to Mamuka Berdzenishvili, head of the regional tourism office, five more casinos are due to open this year, bringing the city’s total to 13.
By the end of 2017, the city is expected to have 19,000 hotel rooms, up from 15,000 at the start of this year.
He pointed out that all this translates into jobs for local residents; for those dislocated by the new construction, there is cash compensation.
These are the reasons so few residents object to a building program that critics call chaotic. “The city is not developing in a planned way,” said Zurab Bakradze, a city planner based in Tbilisi. “They are building wherever it is most beneficial for investors.”
Bakradze doesn’t fault Saakashvili, who is now governor of the Black Sea city of Odessa in Ukraine, for wanting to bring bold architecture to Batumi and other Georgian cities, including Tbilisi, the capital.
“He ordered up some special buildings, and some very famous architects came to Georgia,” Bakradze said. “He wanted to use construction to support the economy. But he never gave any thought to how it would influence the surroundings, the public spaces. When they destroy the public spaces, they destroy the city.”