Looking out over the Caucasus mountains from his busy construction site, British property developer Tom Rawlins has reason to feel more than a little pleased with himself. "If you know what you're doing, you can make a lot of money here," said Rawlins, who is selling dozens of luxury condos and chalets as fast as he can build them in the Sochi ski resort of Krasnaya Polyana.
Rawlins is one of a small but growing number of foreign investors taking an interest in Sochi, a Soviet-era resort on the Black Sea coast in southern Russia that was selected earlier this year to host the Winter Olympics in 2014.
"It's a very interesting area for Russia. It's an area that's going to grow," said Gianni van Daalen, managing director of the Baltschug Kempinski hotel in Moscow.
Van Daalen signed a preliminary agreement with local authorities at the Sochi-2007 economic forum this month to develop four hotels in Sochi and Anapa, another Black Sea resort.
"The drawback is really to see whether they're going forward with infrastructure," said van Daalen, a view echoed by other businessmen at the investment forum. The region is beset by transport problems, but government authorities have vowed to spend billions of dollars to develop local infrastructure and build sport venues for the Olympics.
"A major sport event opens up major opportunities for business," President Vladimir Putin, a major backer of Sochi's Olympic bid and frequent visitor at the resort, told investors at the forum. So far, the main investors at Krasnaya Polyana, a ski resort in the mountains above the city, are state gas giant Gazprom, aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska and mining tycoon Vladimir Potanin.
But Putin and other Russian officials at the forum stressed that foreign investors were welcome too. The first major foreign investor to signal an interest has been Austrian construction giant Strabag, which is 30 percent owned by Deripaska and has experience in building facilities at European ski resorts.
Strabag is bidding for a 2.1-billion-dollar contract to upgrade the roads in Sochi. The company's CEO, Hans Peter Haselsteiner, said the Olympics would create "unique opportunities" for investors. Other businessmen also showed their interest, including Valery Sazhenkov, director of Russia operations for Schneider Electric, a leading French maker of equipment for electricity distribution.
"We have a long tradition in sporting infrastructure. We hope this unique experience will be required for the Winter Olympics in Sochi," Sazhenkov told investors at the forum. For many businesses, the fact that Russia has the 2014 deadline for the Olympics is an added guarantee for investments in the development of the region as a whole.
"This will be a showcase for the new Russia - the focus for everyone is on the deadline," said James Brooke of Jones Lang LaSalle, which is wrapping up three property deals in Sochi. "It's really obvious that the money is coming," said Brooke, one of dozens of businessmen chinking glasses with officials at a lavish party on the Black Sea shoreline at the close of the investor forum.