Pamporovo builds up

Construction
Administrative and bureaucratic procedures and the ill-developed infrastructure at the Pamporovo mountain resort were the main obstacles for building companies, according to Borislav Stoyanov, manager of the building company 21st Century.
Stoyanov said this on April 29 at the Real Estate Expo held in Sofia.
The same day, he announced that the construction of the Perelik Palace holiday complex in Stoykite, an area near Pamporovo, had started on April 29. The value of the complex, according to Stoyanov, was five million euro with area of 14 000 sq m; the scheduled opening date is November 2007.
In the meantime, the company plans to finish another project, the Rodopa House, which is being built in the centre of the Pamporovo resort. It is scheduled for opening in November this year.
The Rodopa House will have an area of 4000 sq m and a value of 2.5 million euro. Interest has been shown in the two complexes, mainly by foreigners, Stoyanov said.
Another building initiative in Pamporovo was announced at the expo, an apartment complex with a hotel section on the south ridge of Snezhanka Peak. Between 12 million and 15 million euro will be invested in it.
Pamporovo is experiencing a visible boost in construction, with the resort becoming an attractive destination for foreigners, mainly from Great Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark. Most of the buyers, per Stoyanov, were foreigners from Great Britain and Ireland.
Not everyone has welcomed the boost in construction at the resort. On April 29, the Union of Architects in Bulgaria, together with local mayors, organised a discussion on the problems of the Rhodope region in the Rhodope city of Smolyan, near Pamporovo. The boost in construction would chase away most of the tourists, according to participants in the discussion.
Specialists said that unless construction was not paused or limited, the mountain resorts would be overcrowded, as has happened with the resorts on the Black Sea coast. This inevitably would lead to the demolishing of some hotels, as in Spain.
The architects demanded new construction and infrastructure plans for the whole region, on which are to be based the new developments of the mountain. The plan should clearly point out the territories where hotel building would be allowed and where it would not.
Rural tourism, together with the eco tourism, must be among the priorities for the region.
At present, most of the municipalities in the region have outdated general construction plans. These general construction plans have often been changed to assist construction plans concerning specific particular objects, which, according to the specialists, was wrong.
Over the past three years, the boarding capacity of Pamporovo has increased three times. Today, the resort has 15 000 people in its hotels, when the planned number in the general construction plan from 1999 was 5600. The architects said that the whole resort area should be declared a protected area by the state, as it is with the Black Sea resorts, so that there could be stricter measures in terms of building sites.
In an attempt to answer the critics, the same day the municipality of Smolyan voted on the general construction plan of the region. The planned capacity of hotel beds, according to the plan, in Pamporovo would be 20 000. The Smolyan region would have 5361 beds and Chepelare, which is under the jurisdiction of Pamporovo, would have 14 000 hotel beds.
The plan has to be approved by the minister of Regional Development and Public Works. According to architect Vesselina Troeva, head of the team working on Pamporovo’s construction plan, the resort would soon reach the capacity of the project Super Borovets at Rila Mountain, where the planned number of hotel beds is 21 000. This would only mean the resort “would be turned into a city”, Troeva said for a local news agency.
The increased number of tourists in Pamporovo would only mean an increase of the electricity and water demand, analysts said. That was why new power units had to be built in the resort. Until present, such utilities have been built in a nearby village. The resort’s new needed supply would definitely meet difficulties in terms of water, the architects said.
http://www.sofiaecho.com/
(08.05.2006)