Bulgarian eco town 'the biggest mistake of Norman Foster's career', say protesters

'Green' resort threatens last area of unspoilt coast · Design is sympathetic to habitats, architect says
Kate Connolly in Karadere beach
The Guardian,
Monday July 14, 2008

An hour-long stroll through an oak forest, past clusters of blackberries, St John's wort, olive trees and butterflies, ends with the rewarding sight of soft, white sands and gently breaking waves.
On Karadere beach, in north-east Bulgaria, a smattering of families have set up camp for the summer, as they have done for years. But this year the happy-go-lucky mood has been punctured by fears that the small corner of paradise is under imminent threat by Bulgaria's first carbon-neutral resort.
Having been considered ripe for development since the collapse of communism 19 years ago, the area is set to be turned into a luxury €1bn (£780m) settlement. Dubbed the Black Sea Gardens, it will include five new hill towns, artificial lakes, a marina and an extensive leisure area and will be self-sustaining, thanks to biomass power and construction from local, natural resources, say the developers.
But the 540-acre (219-hectare) development, spearheaded by the British architect Sir Norman Foster, has enraged Bulgaria's growing band of ecologists.
They say it will destroy the Black Sea coast's last remaining virgin stretches of beach and will have a devastating effect on the rich biodiversity of an area which has environmental protection status under the EU's Natura 2000 programme, which aims to protect endangered species and habitats.
But the Bulgarian government's failure to enact regulations outlawing extensive developments in such areas has allowed coastal constructions to go ahead almost unhindered. Now there is hardly a stretch of the country's 220-mile coastline untouched by overdeveloped resorts. Locals are often restricted from accessing beaches whose entrances are flanked by security guards.
Construction of the Black Sea Gardens project, which Foster and Partner's website describes as "a series of car-free hill towns in an unspoilt setting of oak forests, meadows and river gorges", is due to start next year. Under the plans, 15,000 inhabitants of Sky Village, Wilderness Village, Meadow Village, Cape Village and Sea Village will be encouraged to leave their cars outside the settlements and go by foot, or use pools of electric cars and shuttle buses instead.
Sky is the first village due to be built, with the backing of a British-Bulgarian investment group. US, Russian and Saudi Arabian investors have expressed an interest in the other hill towns, according to the Bulgarian co-architects, Projects Ltd, which describes the resort as having something for every holidaymaker - "from sportish Club Med types to more contemplative, sleepy types".
Foster and Partners did not provide anyone to talk to the Guardian, but in a press release it stressed that the resort is designed to blend in with its environment. "The residential clusters are tightly packed and integrated into the contours of the landscape, preserving the majority of its site as virgin terrain," it read.
Detractors say while the plans might be of a much higher standard than the depressing array of substandard constructions hugging the Black Sea, the sheer scale of the resort will do lasting damage to the natural habitat. The settlements will eat into untouched oak forests, and the invasion of thousands of people and new roads will disturb one of Europe's major migratory routes for millions of birds, known as via pontica, they say.
"I ask myself whether Norman Foster really knows what he's getting himself in to," said Todor Karastoyanov, a musician and protester against the project who frequents the beach and married his wife, Boriana, there last summer.
"We want to try to stop him from making the biggest mistake of his career by building here, because it's immoral and he might not know that."
Biliana Voutchkova, a concert violinist holidaying on Karadere beach with her family, as she has done since her childhood, said: "This has been a magnet for those wishing to spend time away from civilisation and to enjoy nature, but soon it will be lost forever and we'll only realise the consequences once it's too late." Dimiter Georgiev, an ornithologist from nearby Varna, said the habitats of numerous species would be "directly disturbed and destroyed by this construction", including those of otters, butterflies, woodpeckers, honey buzzards, lesser spotted eagles and red-backed shrikes. "We know from experience that these species don't move elsewhere, they just disappear," he said, citing the demise of several species of lark, shrike and bunting in areas given over to resort developments.
"We're not against mass tourism but it should be planned in a proper way, with areas set aside for wildlife to breed. But the problem is so much of the coastal areas have been developed, there's now hardly any space left, which means the ecosystem's resilience is greatly weakened, so any new site does not have the moral right to call itself 'eco'."
Foster has yet to visit the site, but he has been involved in discussions between the British and Bulgarian teams, according to Georgi Stanishev, the director of Projects Ltd. Stanishev, brother of Bulgaria's prime minister Sergei Stanishev, insisted that Black Sea Gardens was environmentally ethical and was breaking no laws.
"What we as the Bulgarian team of architects and Foster and Partners are doing is absolutely adequate to the legislation and the laws of this country," he said, adding that the construction would be sympathetic to its surroundings.
The project was conceived as an antidote to the over-development along the rest of the Black Sea coastline, he said.
Opponents say they will not let the project go ahead without a fight.
"We're planning to hold protests in Sofia, as well as concerts,' said Nadezhda Miksimova, of the campaign group For the Nature. "And we will set up a protest camp on the beach itself."