Batumi Boom Town
GEORGIA 2024
The city appeared in fragments. By the time we turned toward Georgia’s second-largest city, darkness had already fallen. Along the roadside, illuminated billboards advertised futuristic high-rise apartments. As the hillside dropped away and the asphalt wound through the outskirts, the outlines of cranes and half-lit towers came into view. At first, we couldn’t quite make sense of it – until then, Georgian cities had meant minimally maintained commie-block towns with chaotic streets.
Then the coastline opened up ahead, and the main city rose from the water’s edge. It was immediately clear why people call Batumi the Las Vegas of the Black Sea. The city sparkled with brightly lit, extravagantly designed high-rises – a colourful, blinking spectacle.
1 The Night of Arrival
Batumi developed as part of ancient Greek maritime trade networks, situated along routes connecting the Black Sea to broader Eurasian exchange systems. Known as Bathus or Bathys Limen, it served as a maritime gateway between the Mediterranean world, the Caucasus, and Asia.
For almost three millennia, and throughout many empires, Batumi retained its strategic importance as a point of exchange between East and West. Goods moving through the region included silk, spices, wine, ceramics, precious metals, timber, slaves, and, in later periods, oil and agricultural products.
During the Soviet era, Batumi was transformed into one of the USSR’s southernmost subtropical seaside resorts, known for its sanatoriums, botanical gardens, and Black Sea tourism. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city became part of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara and entered a period of political and economic isolation. Adjara’s reintegration into Georgia’s central governance in 2004 marked Batumi’s economic reintegration and the beginning of its modern urban transformation.
2 Checking out the areas close by
In the early Y2Ks, Batumi attracted a handful of Kazakh investors who began building new seaside hotels and casinos. Since then, the city gradually earned a reputation as the “Las Vegas of the Black Sea” and has become a popular destination for gamblers from Turkey, Iran, and other Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries, where gambling is heavily restricted.
In recent years, the scale of real estate development has been unprecedented. Batumi’s coastline has been transformed into a dense skyline of high-rise hotels and apartment towers, driving what is now Georgia’s fastest-growing property market. Old neighbourhoods have been demolished and replaced with disneyfied simulacra of urban life. Yet despite the striking volume of new construction, most buildings remain vacant – giving space to the speculative vision of private investors rather than lived urban realities. The expected mass influx of tourists has failed to materialise, even during peak seasons – the situation exacerbated by the covid pandemic. Meanwhile, the city has absorbed a different kind of mobility: Russians and Ukrainians fleeing military conscription have settled in Batumi — contributing to a new demographic and geopolitical reconfiguration of the city.
With our second accommodation, we wanted to get closer to the reality of Batumi’s real estate boom. We booked a night in one of the city’s many “apart-hotels.” In the Batumi Beach Tower, a privately rented apartment was offered to us for 28 Georgian lari – barely ten euros. At the reception desk, we collected our keys and boarded the elevator to the 21st floor.
3 Moving to a Boom Town Apartment (28GEL/10€ per night special discount)
Inside our room, everything was tidy and clean. The big highlight: a soft bed that felt like heaven compared to what we’d been sleeping on the past few days. The downsides: a suspiciously shaky balcony railing and a questionable amount of algae in the shower.
Also, even while resting, the ding of the elevators arriving in the corridor echoed through the thin door. It was clear the building wasn’t fully utilized. The ground floor, for example, looked complete, but a wall behind the lobby hid half the space, sealing off a row of perfectly empty rooms. Every floor above the 24th was completely vacant as well. Press the Roof-button “by accident”, and the elevator would ascend to a stop exposed to the open sky, with only a flimsy grid door separating you from a sheer drop. Needless to say, the advertised rooftop garden was nowhere to be found.
4 INVEST NOW!
After our first few days, we were still overwhelmed by the sheer scale of Batumi’s construction activities, the demolishment and the new buildings. Billboards loomed over every street, promising taller towers and glossier lifestyles – promises we regarded with suspicion.
5 Skyscraper Adventure
During our second day immersed in this surreal dreamscape, the urge to ascend one of the supertalls became difficult to resist. We set our sights on the most intriguing of them all: the ominous Black Sea Pearl Tower, rising directly between the beach and the New Boulevard. Yet, as we soon discovered, the structure was another ghost tower — an abandoned, or at least partially stalled, construction site.
Besides ticking off our self-set mission of ascending Batumi’s most fashionable skyscraper, a few more lingering impressions remain before bringing this journey to a close:
1. CCTV
Firstly, the entire city appeared saturated with CCTV surveillance. Cameras were mounted on nearly every street corner, on poles, and walls, blurring the boundary between public and private space. And before you ask: yes, the cameras were working — and yes, somebody was actually watching. We tested it.
2. The city has its own version of Central Park
It is called Parki 6 Maisi and stretches around the 5.5-hectare Nurigeli Lake (reportedly of natural origin) and combines tree-lined promenades with neatly maintained lawns and subtropical vegetation.
3. Neon City
Thirdly, high-rise buildings and neon signs have a longer history in Batumi than its recent construction boom might suggest and reflecting earlier phases of Soviet and post-Soviet urban modernization.
4. Digital Government
Fourth, what began as a routine stop to pay for parking took an unexpected turn. We discovered that the same Paybox machines are also used for gambling, so instead of only paying our parking fee we lost all our money on Crystalbet. (Just kidding.)
PS: If you ever find yourself late on your taxes or needing to pay a traffic fine — e.g. because Georgia’s roadways are heavily camera-surveilled and the traffic rules can feel somewhat opaque at first — a simple Paybox machines got you covered!
5. Police Patrol
Fifth, even compared to other Georgian cities, Batumi appeared to have a noticeably higher presence of police cars on patrol. Given how quiet the streets were (and the fact that we were fairly sure we were among the only real foreigners in the city at the time), we couldn’t help but wonder: what exactly are they enforcing here?
