The case of the beach avenue in Bulgaria’s Black Sea city of Varna has all the features of a Hollywood-style corporate drama with a wide social impact. The drama sees public and private corporate interests arguing over what is intended to be a world-class tourist destination providing work to several hundred local residents.

On the one side, there are the corporate interests of Holding Varna, the company which wants to develop the city’s central beach avenue, and on the other side, there are a dozen NGOs supported by the Zelenite (The Greens) party, who see nothing but corruption and abuse of the law behind the deal. Accusations of corruption and blackmail are being traded. The issue took on such proportions that it made German publicist Jurgen Roth (who takes an interest in Bulgaria’s political and underground life) take the side of the NGOs and ask Prime Minister Boiko Borissov to investigate the deal and the group of businessmen known in Varna as TIM, the group behind Holding Varna. 

The deal
On June 15 2009, Holding Varna signed a deal with then-regional governor Hristo Kontrov to buy close to 118 000 sq m in the city’s Sea Garden for 11 747 445 leva, or about 95 leva a sq m. The deal followed Holding Varna’s project known as Purva Aleya (First Alley) which aims to turn the beach area into a large-scale tourism destination. This would include the building of a yacht basin, five hotels (four three-storeys high and one 10-storey high, each of 400 beds) restaurants, amusement parks, sport facilities and an aqua park. For the purpose, Holding Varna pledged to invest 73.1 million leva in the project, much of it for protecting the area’s landslide zones and green zones as much as possible. The investor will not have the right to sell the land within the next five years. 

The deal does not include the beach, because by law it has the status of a state border and cannot be sold.

So far, so good. The beach avenue in Varna has always had good tourism potential, and has attracted much interest over the past 20 years, with the central part being packed with restaurants and nightclubs every summer. Until now, most commercial interest was in the area close to the former state baths, where most of the nightclubs are. For years, the rest of the beach avenue, a stretch of a few kilometres, was left untouched, mainly because of the landslide threat, poor infrastructure and the lack of a large-scale investor willing to invest millions in developing the avenue.

A few years ago, however, city hall finally decided to invest in a new road and parking facilities. Suddenly, the area became attractive and TIM, in the shape of Holding Varna, surfaced to offer an investment plan and a project that, according to the company, will make everybody happy.