Sochi residents concerned of building Olympic alternate of Kurortny Avenue

Residents of the city of Sochi express their concern of the plans to erect a 17-kilometre-long alternate of the existing Kurortny (Resort) Avenue. The new highway threatens to liquidate thousands of rarest vegetative exotics, bring unimaginable economic costs and create ecological hazard, as the experts say.

According to Deputy Alexander Shirobokov, Sochi has no need for this avenue; it is better to spend money on other, more urgent needs.

According to Olga Kozinskaya, chair of the public town-planning council of Sochi, many plans are not backed up by scientific researches and economic justifications; they are adopted silently and discretely by various private and state agencies, without any account of the opinion of townspeople.

Valery Suchkov, one of the founders of the above public council, which sits in Sochi every Friday, says that Sochi residents should not keep silent but actively defend their rights.

"Those who keep silent are the Union of Architects, the Town-Planning Council at City Mayor, the Committee for Architecture of the Administration… In the Hosta District, in the logbook for making proposals, only 3 visitors of the exhibition out of 90,000 district residents left their entries," said Mr Suchkov.