Port in a storm
January 31st, 2009Kerin Hope, FT’s Athens correspondent, January 17 2009
Archaeologist Teo Rokov watches intently as a mechanical digger raises a bucket of soil from a building site in Varna’s Gratska Mahala, or Greek Quarter (where the offices of Eurolink Investment Group are located). Mixed in with the earth, he spots fragments of medieval pottery. “This is plain old household stuff but you never know,” he says. “We track every construction project in this neighbourhood. If something important comes up, the developer covers the cost of a full-scale excavation.”
The scene is indicative of life in Bulgaria’s largest Black Sea port, which was settled two-and-a-half millennia ago by colonists from Miletus, a Greek city on the Asia Minor coast and is now, as the country’s second fastest growing city, coping with a big influx of new residents.
Originally, and for centuries under Greek, Roman and Turkish rule, Varna was a hub for traders shipping salted fish, grain, furs and gold to the Mediterranean and beyond. By the early 1900s Armenians, Jews and Bulgarians had joined Greek merchants and many took part in a grand urban revival of the city, launched by King Ferdinand. New mansions designed by Italian architects were painted in pastel colours appropriate to a fashionable European resort with a pier, wooden bathing huts and a Sea Garden (a stretch of parkland planted with rare trees under the supervision of a renowned Czech botanist and landscaper).
Varna now draws about 30,000 new residents a year and it was recently rated Bulgaria’s “Best city to live in” for the second year running in a poll carried out by Darik Radio, a private station, and 24 Chasa, a national newspaper. Students from three local universities support a lively bar and music scene and, in summer, the city’s seafront promenade fills up with visitors from the capital, Sofia, western European tourists bussed in from nearby resorts for a day’s sightseeing and increasing numbers of Russians, Ukrainians and Romanians, whose own Black Sea coastlines are less hospitable than Bulgaria’s.
The country has been hit by energy shortages this month following Russia’s cut-off of gas supplies to Europe. But the Bulgarian government has now asked the European Union for €400 mn to build a link with an alternative Turkish-Greek pipeline and Varna itself plans to consider the possibility of building a liquefied natural gas terminal.
Transport links to the city have already been improving, with gradual upgrades to the highway to Sofia, a five-hour drive away, and more frequent air connections via Bulgaria Air, which runs three flights daily to the capital in the winter and four in the summer. Fraport, a German company, is now running the city airport under a 35-year concession, investing in a runway refurbishment and expanded terminal facilities, and several international airlines, including low-cost operators, now fly to Varna from European hubs.
A new city master plan, due to be launched this year, will be a 21st-century take on King Ferdinand’s grand scheme. Among other projects, the commercial port will be moved to a new site on an inland lagoon to the west of the city, opening up space for what would become the Black Sea’s largest and best-equipped marina. The new master plan will allow for a major redevelopment of the port site. There’ll be luxury homes, hotels, restaurants - in effect a whole new neighbourhood within a stone’s throw of the Gratska Mahala.
