Gomarduli Ski Resort Project to be Revived

Developers began working on Gomarduli Ski Resort in mountainous Ajara in 2011. Soon after development began, featuring several guesthouses and a restaurant, the Revenue Service of Georgia seized the property for non-payment of taxes. In 2014, resort director Jemal Darchidze reported that the tax they had failed to pay, in the amount of 126,000 GEL ($47,014), was not included in the original deal between Darchidze’s joint-stock company “Gomarduli” and the Georgian government, who sold the 52 acres of land to the company for a symbolic price of 1 lari. Darchidze insisted that the deal, made with then-President Mikheil Saakashvili, promised that the company would be exempt from taxes for a 15-year period.

In 2012, however, after just one season of operation, the courts disagreed, saying that Gomarduli was responsible for the taxes and seizing the resort’s property for non-payment.

In early 2017, there were rumors in the media that the Ministry of Finance and Economy of the Ajara Autonomous Republic had plans to develop the Gomarduli resort, as the government began restoring the access road to the resort, and that they were working with the national Economic Council to get the taxes waived and the property returned to the developers.

Darchidze told the news website Commersant that in January, by the Prime Minister’s resolution and with the support of government of Ajara, 1.5 million GEL ($559,000) in taxes, fees, and fines, was written off from the company and the property seizure was reversed. The government of Ajara now holds a 10% stake in the company Gomarduli.

The company now plans to implement a three-year development strategy to be able to host up to 1,000 visitors by 2022. Adding to the existing five guesthouses and restaurants, which can currently cater to up to 60 visitors, will be several cottages, a stadium, and an extreme sports’ park. The renovation work and new infrastructure is expected to cost 300,000 GEL ($111,940).

In late January 2019, Ajara Chairman Tornike Rizhvadze officially announced that the decision had been made to remove the sequestration on the property of Gomarduli.

Approximately a two-hour drive from Batumi, and a seven-and-a-half-hour trek from Tbilisi, the resort is expected to be popular among people from western Georgian and visitors from Turkey.

By Samantha Guthrie

Photo: Adjara Tour