OREANDA-NEWS. June 08, 2009. The resettlement of families living on the land allotted for the Olympic venues and sports facilities has gotten underway in Sochi, the host city of the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics. In the Krasnodar region’s regional office overseeing Olympic preparations, a total of 57 framework resettlement agreements have already been inked.

According to the deputy head of the regional administration, Vasily Nadiradze, most families to be resettled have agreed to the terms offered by the national and regional governments. “We certainly bear in mind that the residents of the Imeretinskaya lowland have developed a lifestyle of their own; they have placed their children in kindergartens and schools here,” Nadiradze explained. Those unwilling to be relocated may opt for housing in the new neighboring village, Nekrasovskoye, where construction is going at full swing. The owners of land plots will be offered 700 square meters of land as the law prescribes, while the excess of land will be compensated with money or additional living area in new homes.

The Ryabovs and Vakunenkos were among the first to pull up their roots. The Ryabov family occupied a cramped cabin on Golubaya street in the Imereti bay for over 40 years, bringing up two daughters there. “Of course, we got used to it, but when they told us about the new flats, we packed and moved within a single day,” Yekaterina Ryabova confessed. Instead of their previous home, where all eight of them had to live cooped up, the family got two spacious apartments in the heart of Sochi. The compensation they got was large enough not only to afford a new home, but also to furnish it and install household appliances.
The land plot the Ryabovs previously occupied will accommodate a freight terminal for construction materials.

25 land purchase agreements were negotiated in March and April, with the grand total of compensations running up to RUB 748m, with 547.5m already remitted to the owners of the land and property to be taken away under the agreements. The compensations are based on the market value of the property and factor in the losses incurred as the property is withdrawn, a source in SC Olimpstroy stressed.
Ten more families are expected to give house-warming parties fairly soon. All in all, over 2,000 people are to be resettled from the Olympic construction area by the end of 2010. According to SC Olimpstroy’s Vice President Alexander Saurin, “most deals are struck almost in no time.”

To host the Olympics, 218 new venues will be built, including 13 sports facilities. As such, the Imeretinskaya lowland will house the central stadium for the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, large and small ice arenas, an ice palace, and the Olympic village.

On April 6, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree listing the federal land plots that will be proffered to people and legal entities in exchange for the land attached for the construction of Olympic venues. The decree features two land plots in the Adler region: one measuring over 64,190 square meters in the Esto-Sadok village, and the other one in the Krasnaya Polyana village with an area of 97,240 square meters.