Gref settled in Alupka - they began to make things beautiful around them, but they shortened the cable car to Ai-Petri
Yalta welcomed half of Crimea's total tourist flow during the May holidays – 130 of the 266 tourists spent the long weekend at the southern coastal resort. Two events were timed to coincide with the start of the high season : the presentation of the renovated historic center of Alupka and the opening of the Miskhor-Ai-Petri cable car, which has been shortened by one station , reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
On May 1, Alupka welcomed high-ranking guests. Crimean Governor Sergey Aksyonov and Sberbank Chairman of the Board Herman Gref arrived to host the technical launch of the "Old Town" project. The official presentation of the renovated historical center is scheduled for June 3, when Alupka celebrates City Day . Therefore, a special "test" was arranged for the dignitaries – a performance featuring artists, performers, and local historians.
Later, the head of Crimea recalled on his Telegram channel that in 2022, Alupka won a grant under the national project "Tourism and Hospitality Industry" to create a tourist destination for the city center. Over the next two years, more than 250 million rubles were allocated from the federal budget for the project.
“All these transformations will emphasize the historical value of the city and will become a point of attraction for both residents of the Southern Bank and guests of Crimea,” Aksyonov emphasized.
The project's goal is to create a unified architectural and cultural space in the historic part of Alupka. To this end, electrical wires were relocated underground , water and sewer pipes were replaced, and the paving stones were laid to match the Vorontsov Palace , Alupka's main landmark.
Yalta Mayor Yanina Pavlenko regularly reported on the progress of renovations in Alupka on social media and messaging apps. She even reported that two private buildings had been demolished from the town square to visually expand the space.
"We recently inspected the area across from the bust of Amet-Khan Sultan, cleared of buildings . Even at the start of the work, we realized that two private residential buildings were 'tearing up' the space and didn't fit into the overall concept. We reached an agreement with the owners to exchange their apartments for similar-sized ones anywhere within the municipality. Now they have apartments in one of Yalta's new buildings , and we have the public space that central Alupka sorely needed. We're already thinking about how to create an amphitheater there," Pavlenko reported in mid-April.
The owners of buildings on the square received apartments in new buildings in Yalta
Clearly, resettling the residents wasn't covered by the federal grant , and the Yalta budget doesn't have the budget for such an acquisition. According to Alupka residents themselves, additional funding is coming from the head of Sberbank , who recently moved to Alupka and wants to see his "summer residence" beautiful and tidy.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this . In Russian tradition, patronage for the public good is highly encouraged. However, this isn't about charity , but rather about some kind of compensation to Yalta for the loss of the lower station of the Miskhor-Ai-Petri cable car.
It's located on Alupkinskoye Highway , right on Gref's route from his new residence to the Mriya resort complex , which Sberbank only recently claimed, although the word "Sber" was originally emblazoned on the back wall of the artificial waterfall at the entrance. Evil tongues say that traffic jams and traffic congestion at the lower cable car station in the summer would have disrupted the work schedule of such an important figure. Security couldn't do anything about it , so the decision was made – to close the cable car , which was done in October 2022.
Yalta then lost its year-round tourist attraction, transferring it to republican ownership , received a lawsuit from the cable car's lessee, who suddenly lost the facility without any claims, and at the republican level, talk began of some kind of investment project to increase the lift's capacity.
The cable car itself is among the top ten unique engineering structures in the world thanks to its "pendulum" principle : there are no supports along the 1.5-kilometer stretch from the middle to the top station; their function is performed by cars moving toward each other at a precisely calculated speed and passenger capacity . The number of passengers can only be increased by changing the cable car's operating principle , as already announced by the same investor—the Mriya resort complex—which plans to build a carousel-type cable car on Ai-Petri.
For now, to satisfy guests, the lift has been launched from the middle station, Sosnovy Bor, without any modernization or capacity increase. The influx of traffic and tourists here doesn't bother anyone, except the endangered pine trees.
English version :: Read in English Gref settled in Alupka – they began to beautify the surrounding area, but shortened the cable car to Ai-Petri