SOCHI, RUSSIA — The changes in store for this dowdy Black Sea resort are captured in one city official's vision for the typical taxi driver, now likely to drive a battle-scarred Russian model and wear shabby trousers and a scowl.
"We want him to sit not behind the wheel of a Volga but a Mercedes," Deputy Mayor Vladimir Boychenko said. "We want him to wear a tie, with white leather gloves and a beautiful smile."
That may sound farfetched, but don't count Sochi out. After all, this famed summer destination, with its palm trees and magnolias, has incongruously managed to win the right to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Sochi's subtropical strip of beach has long made it a premier playground for Russians of all ages, and the city's mystique lives on despite unfashionable Soviet-era hotels and an overcrowded shore. Now, thanks to its Caucasus Mountain backdrop, city and national leaders aim to retool Sochi as a year-round money-making machine.
"The victory in the Olympic race means a lot to us," Boychenko said. "It's really a victory. It will allow us to jump forward several steps at a time. Russians know Sochi and love Sochi quite a lot. . . . We want to turn it into a world-level resort."
Many of the locals are happy at that prospect. But others are afraid that when the developers move in, they'll lose their homes and forests, and even their access to the nearby mountains.
For Russia as a whole, winning the Olympic bid in July was trumpeted as a major geopolitical victory reflecting the country's newly restored weight in the world, which has come largely thanks to money from oil and gas exports.
Plans call for $12.5 billion to be poured into local preparations for the Games, providing a major economic boost to the wider Sochi region in southern Russia.
Optimists predict that hosting the Games in Sochi will help ensure that Russia and neighboring Georgia resolve disputes over the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia without an eruption of war.
"I think it's magnificent, because it's a huge event for our country," said Irina Larkina, 34, who was visiting Sochi on vacation and said she'd be back for the Olympics.
"Of course it's a political victory too," added her husband, Sergei Larkin, 35.
