Everybody who has taken the care to look at Sofia’s land map knows that the city has developed mainly to the south, the west and the north but never to the east. The reason was simple. At the eastern end of Sofia stands a massive monster, a reminder of Bulgaria’s communist industrial past, the once pride and joy, Kremikovtzi steel plant. The chimneys of Kremikovtzi can be seen when passing on the motorway to Varna. The heavy smoke coming from those chimneys can also be seen, which reveals why Sofia was never developed at its eastern end. For dozens of years Kremikovtzi has been sending its smoke directly to Sofia and its citizens, leaving little space for any business in the area. This, despite all the positive assets of the Kremikovtzi area, such as the well developed road and railway infrastructure, has turned the area into a much deserted one. This, however, according to Sofia’s chief architect Petur Dikov could be changed.
What Dikov said on September 28 took many by surprise and triggered speculation about immense profit from real-estate deals. On September 28, Dikov told journalists that Kremikovtzi should be closed down and turned into a modern high-tech business centre with skyscrapers and shopping malls. “I do not see why we should keep this technologically old steel plant running and polluting the air when we could have a centre similar to the London City, just outside Sofia,” Dikov said. All that Kremikovtzi’s owner the Indian tycoon Pramod Mittal had to do was to close Kremikovtzi, demolish it and sell the land to investors.
Indeed Dikov’s words make sense since Kremikovtzi has one big asset: its land. If demolished Kremikovtzi will most certainly become a “real-estate El Dorado” with its thousands of hectares. According to Dikov, the land of Kremikovtzi was suitable for sky scrapers and other high-tech construction.
Dikov said that his idea was just a suggestion to Kremikovtzi’s owners. The later did not take it that easily. Kremikovtzi’s CEO Alexander Tomov reacted negatively to Dikov’s words. Speaking on Bulgarian National Television (BNT) on October 2 Tomov called Dikov’s statements “ignorant”. “To close down Kremikovtzi is madness since the plant accounts for three per cent of the country’s GDP and 10 per cent of Bulgaria’s imports to the EU,” Tomov said Most of all,Tomov said, it would take up to 10 years for the plant to be demolished and billions of euro would be lost.
Tomov came out with his own proposal. “We are intending to invest in turning Kremikovtzi into a green plant, meaning that the plant will continue to work as usual but maintaining the highest ecological standards. This means that Kremikovtzi can become a high-tech industrial centre as oppose to just business centre,” Tomov told BNT. According to him, Dikov’s idea was simply part of mayor Boiko Borissov’s October 28 municipal elections campaign. “We know that Kremikovtzi has serious problems with environmental issues but we are following a programme and investing money in changing this. Moreover we are covering all our debts to suppliers with the exception of the debts we inherited when Kremikovtzi was privatised. For these debts, however, we have also signed agreements with the suppliers,” Tomov said.
What is the real nature of Dikov’s idea and whether it is possible at all, only time will tell, but his words caused a stir on the market, according to real-estate brokers. At present, the price of land in the area is 55 euro a sq m. After Dikov’s statement brokers said there was a certain trend in increasing the prices which would inevitably lead to speculation.
