For Faded Russian Resort, A Truly Olympic Task

Residents tend crops on future site of Olympic ice arenas in Sochi, a city of 400,000 on the Black Sea. The original price tag for preparations was $13 billion, but that has now doubled. (By Sergey Ponomarev -- Associated Press)

All of that is probably the easy part. Local officials say that to support the Games, the city will need 360 miles of new roads, 440 miles of fiber-optic cable, a light-rail system, an expanded airport, two new power stations, 30,000 new hotel rooms, a new seaport and new sewage treatment plants.

Getting people to and from the mountaintops will require 60 miles of new roads and rail as well as 37 miles of tunnels, according to Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin.

Sochi, a city of 400,000 residents, will take in 180,000 workers to get these many jobs done, according to federal estimates.

Land prices have soared in advance of the expected construction boom; upscale apartments are already selling for $1,000 a square foot. But for about 1,400 people with homes near the future Olympic park in Sochi, the development of new hotels, apartments and retail complexes means eviction. The Russian parliament passed a law allowing the local authorities to seize land deemed essential to the Games.

Local officials have promised to compensate each affected homeowner with cash, land, or a new apartment or house. "Not a single person should suffer," Malkov said. "This land will be taken, but they will be compensated with as much as their land would get on the open market."

"I don't believe them," said Vladislav Boldeskul, 38, who has stopped construction on a nearly completed home for his extended family that he began in 2004. "If you know Russia, you know why I don't believe them."

Residents also argue that their homes, which lie outside the park site, are not necessary for the Games. "I have a feeling our land is already sold," said Dmitri Vishnevsky, 38, who farms a small plot by the park. "But we will fight by all lawful means for our homes."

The authorities view the Olympics as turning Sochi into a world-class resort that will continue to attract tourists long after the Games are over.

"In a few years there will be nothing Soviet left and Sochi will match any European resort," said Sergei Krivonosov, who owns a number of restaurants and nightclubs in Sochi. One of his clubs, called Platform, features a glass dance floor over the Black Sea with women in G-string bikinis lolling on floats beneath the gyrating patrons.

Some of Russia's richest businessmen, all allies of the Kremlin, have stepped in as Olympic boosters. Billionaire Oleg Deripaska is planning a resort on the Black Sea adjacent to the Olympic park. He has also built a new terminal for Sochi's airport and a new five-star hotel downtown.

Vladimir Potanin, a metals magnate, is plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into a resort that will host alpine skiing events. Close by is another exclusive facility built by Gazprom, where cross-country and biathlon skiing events will be held.

The environmental group Greenpeace argues that some of the development in the mountains is encroaching on a nature reserve that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Both the mountain Olympic village and the bobsled course will be built right on the border of the protected wilderness. Greenpeace said it has proposed a series of alternative sites that the authorities have rejected.

"Any construction on the border will damage the whole natural complex inside," said Andrei Petrov of Greenpeace Russia, who voiced suspicions that the Olympic organizers' insistence on opening this untouched part of the mountains is about future development, not the 2014 Games. He said Greenpeace has contacted lawyers in Switzerland, home of the IOC, to explore the possibility of a lawsuit.

The Russian organizers are unmoved.

"We are studying the alternatives they are offering, but at the moment I don't see a better alternative for luge and bobsleigh," Bitenev said. "And with or without the Olympics, this place will be developed."