Destruction of the Odesa Maritime Terminal as a result Russian missile strike On September 25, 2023, the whole city was shaken. At the same time as the marine station, the building of the nineteen-story hotel "Odessa", which was closed during Yanukovych's time and frankly, was not very liked by the people of Odesa, because it blocked the view of the Odesa Bay, moreover, it stood without an owner for many years. Now the future of this building has become even more uncertain. ElitExpert tried to understand all the vicissitudes of the fate of this unfortunate building.
The idea of a world-class hotel in Odesa arose in the mid-1990s. At that time, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liquidation of the popular Odesa-Crimea-Caucasus sea line, there was a need for a new concept of tourist and cruise recreation to attract tourist flows.
In 1996, the then management of the Odesa port asked the Odesa Institute of Marine Engineers (now the Odesa National Maritime University) to develop a plan for the development of tourism business in the port. The university developed a project in the style of the traditional Western model "airport-hotel-ship". The peculiarity of the cruise business is to serve a large number of people arriving from different cities, who need to be accommodated, preferably in one hotel. Odesa already had an airport and a seaport, there were no problems with ships, but there were no hotels of the appropriate level of comfort and capacity close to the port. According to the conclusions of the institute's specialists, the new hotel complex could become a key element in the development of tourism business in Odesa port.
The port management liked this idea - and the necessary permission from the Ministry of Transport of Ukraine was obtained in 1998.
The construction proposal was sent to the developer company, which claimed that it already had experience in creating similar complexes in Kyiv. Since the management of hotel complexes was not part of the range of basic services of the port, the port administration put forward a requirement: the construction company must invest 20% of its own funds in the construction and after the process is completed must find an operator to manage the complex. The company that undertook the construction was LLC "Brooklyn-Kyiv", which owns cargo, grain and container terminals in the port of Odesa and which in the best years accounted for 40% of the total volume of services provided by the port.
The main shareholder of this company is businessman and ex-governor of the Odesa region Volodymyr Nemyrivskyi, who also owns the Stalkanat plant and a stake in the Pivdenny bank.
The planned budget for the future hotel complex was estimated at 24 million 700 thousand US dollars, of which 80% was to be provided by the port, and the remaining part was contributed by "Brooklyn-Kyiv" from its own funds.
The port, not having the opportunity to independently invest about 20 million dollars in construction, received the necessary funds from the state budget.
As mentioned earlier, the developer company was responsible for finding an operator for the future hotel. Volodymyr Nemyrivskyi involved Kempinski Hotels in this role. The construction of the hotel proceeded at an intensive pace, and already on April 1, 2001, on the day of the Odessa "Humorina" festival, the building was opened.
The new hotel was given the status of five stars, and the Kempinski sign glistened on its facade. However, the joy of the new operator was short-lived. The expected flow of tourists and foreign ships with wealthy travelers never came, and an attempt to include the area where the hotel was located in a free economic zone also failed.
In the end, nine months after the opening, in the winter of 2002, Kempinski Hotels decided to terminate the contract early and left the project.
As for the 20 percent share in the hotel that belonged to Brooklyn-Kyiv, it was divided equally between two Odesa businessmen: Oleksandr Halytskyi (brother of ex-head of the State Employment Service Volodymyr Halytskyi) and Semyon Sukhanov. "Caesar" LLC, owned by them, became the new co-owner of the hotel. In March 2002, an agreement on joint activities for the period until December 30, 2004 was signed between LLC "Cesar" and SE "Odesa Sea Trade Port". According to this document, the profit from the joint activity was to be divided between the participants in accordance with the size of their contributions, and thus Caesar LLC received full control over the former Kempinski Hotel, now renamed Odessa.
After the contract expired in 2005, "Cesar" LLC filed a lawsuit against SE "OMTP". The lawsuit alleged that the parties could not reach an agreement regarding the use of the joint property after the contract ended, which allegedly violated the rights of Caesar LLC as a co-owner.
In the end, the court proceedings ended with a settlement agreement, according to which both parties agreed to use and operate the common property complex of the Hotel "Odesa" for 49 years.
In 2010, after the "Donetsk clan" came to power, conflicts began around the "Odesa" hotel. Boris Kolesnikov, then Minister of Transport, claimed that the hotel was occupied by the local mafia and the state was not getting any benefits from it. The consequences were the cancellation of the settlement agreement of 2005 and a criminal case against the port chief Pavlyuk.
As a result, in September 2011, the Higher Economic Court canceled the decision on the transfer of the Odesa Sea Trade Port Hotel to third parties and returned it to state management. After that, on December 17, 2011, the hotel was closed under the pretext of lack of profit, and stood abandoned until today's rocket attack.
At the end of 2012, a new contract was approved between the Odesa Sea Trade Port and a new company, Premier International, which intended to manage the hotel. However, since the company belonged to Oleksandr Babakov, the former vice-speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the contract was eventually terminated in 2014 amid the outbreak of war, and since then the hotel has remained abandoned and without any prospects for the future.
In addition, rapid and possibly poor-quality construction led to the fact that over the years of idleness, the hotel completely fell into disrepair, life support systems failed, and now it represented only a shadow of its former splendor - facade structures collapsed, water supply, sewage systems failed , heat supply, ventilation, etc. The dying hotel turned into a monument of mismanagement.
In 2015, the people of Odessa were promised that the hotel would be operational after reconstruction, but the promises remained unfulfilled. The situation moved from a standstill only in 2020. Andriy Stavnitser, a well-known Odesa businessman, decided to reconstruct the hotel: it was he who bought 20% from private investors and closed the deal with the state already during the war.
«I didn't like this hotel - a monument of sloppiness and bad taste - as much as all Odessans, so I dreamed of finally reconstructing it. I dreamed about it for a long time, invested millions of dollars, bought a share from private investors and, despite the war, closed the deal with the state. Initiated the concession of the entire territory of the passenger Maritime Terminal, found partners who were ready to invest with me in the construction of a zone that is not inferior to Barcelona or Copenhagen. I even picked up several world urban planners and architects... Everything will be fine. We will rebuild everything. Can't wait, creatures. It will be beautiful in Odessa", the businessman wrote on Facebook today.
Now there are many questions about the future fate of the hotel. Will it be able to be restored and who will take financial and legal responsibility for it, given that the state owns 80% of the property? Moreover, bearing in mind the complicated history of the object, finding answers to these questions can be just as difficult. as well as deciding what to do with the building itself.
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