Snow expected by summer’s end

DRUSKININKAI - Blanketing the Lithuanian tourism industry, a 30 million-plus euro indoor and outdoor snow arena being constructed to open at the end of this summer, in the spa resort town of Druskininkai, could become one of the biggest drawcards of the Baltic States, reeling in visitors from across Europe, officials have claimed.
The attraction, named the SNORAS Snow Arena, will be the first of its kind for the Baltic region, and aims to, by pumping two megawatts of energy per day into the building, offer temperate climates for skiing and snowboarding all year round, on meters of artificial snow. 

The gigantic complex, which will sit on the opposite bank of the Nemunas River across from an existing multi-million euro aquatic fun park, will contain three ski slopes, a myriad of bars, restaurants, cafes and children’s activities: and this just as a beginning.

“We want to have a hotel here, a spa, skydiving, a direct gondola to the town center, and a new bridge. These are just our nearest plans,” marketing director of the project, Reda Sinkeviciene, said.
“For the whole town and for the whole of Lithuania, this will be attractive to other countries and will boost the nation’s tourism,” she said. “Lithuania starts from Druskininkai, not Vilnius.”

Investors into the project, including 45 million litas (13 million euros) contributed by the local municipality partially from European Union  funds, and the rest from construction firm Stamita, were banking that the arena would help further rejuvenate the Druskininkai region’s already rising infrastructure.
“At this moment the city has 7,500 tourism outlets (spas, hotels and so on). In ten years, this could be around 10,000,” predicted the director of Druskininkai tourism business information center, Rimantas Palionis, who said the ski arena was a pivotal step in the city’s long-term plan.

“This project was like the finishing of the city’s strategy. It’s not 100 percent finished, but it is well on its way.”
Due to streams of private and government investments over the last ten years, Druskininkai has transformed itself from a swampy sanatorium town of the Soviet-era, to a luxury location for health travel and extravagant living. “Following Soviet times, it was really terrible,” recalled marketing director of the upmarket Druskininkai-based Spa Vilnius, which offers a menu of over 370 lavish body treatments in its facilities, including cranberry skin peeling, baths of gold or milk, amber aroma therapy, and an underwater massage (a technique utilized only in Druskininkai).

“Ten years ago, good investors started coming in and wanting to build good quality infrastructure, and renew old sanatoriums and hotels. That’s where it started. From 2007, it began really growing. Before this, it was really bad, no tourism or anything,” she continued, extolling how Lithuania’s entrance to the European Union was a key catalyst for the upswing.
Tourists from all over Europe have been flocking to Druskininkai, known for the high levels of healthy natural mineralization in its bore waters, in recent years, with heavy patronage being recorded from Norwegians, Russians and Germans.

Though the ski arena remains under construction, with around 300 workers, from electricians to builders, scaffolders and painters, on site each day, a heavy flow of curious e-mails were already flooding the project’s management from neighboring countries. “It’s getting a lot of attention. Poland, Belarus, Latvia and Estonia are waiting for us to open,” claimed Sinkeviciene.
The arena was originally set to open by a June deadline this year, but construction was delayed, ironically, by heavy falls of snow last winter, among other reasons.

“The architectural design was changed twice. It has been such a difficult construction, and they had to think about every little detail,” said Sinkevicience.
There was difficulty for management in consulting on how to go about building a project of such enormity in Lithuania, as due to it being the only one of its kind in the Baltics, they had to search further afield for comparison. “Our consulting partners were in Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic, who have similar arenas, though not the same. This will be the longest in Europe,” she said.

Industry officials were backing the grandeur of the project, betting its arduous architectural and consulting processes would be worth the struggle in the end. “It’s like an announcement to the whole of Europe: we are here. Already, journalists were coming in from all over, from Sweden, from Italy to broadcast it,” said Palionis.
“The town will be opened up due to such a huge project.”

Rather than being simply a tourism feature, the planned concept for the ski arena was to offer training facilities for professional winter athletes to utilize for more than just a couple of months per year. “Lithuania was, for the most part, a basketball country, but now, maybe, for children who are growing up, we will have the new sport of skiing,” speculated Sinkevicience.
The Druskininkai region was already no stranger to outlandish tourism concepts, calling itself home to the famous outdoor Stalinist sculpture museum of Grutas Park, which has displayed severe statues of fallen Soviet figureheads since 2001.

Marketing director of the park, Richard Bark, has applauded the implementation of mega-projects such as the ski arena to the region, saying they will aid in regional tourism growth, and perhaps equate in funding for further developments into original ideas, such as Grutas Park. “Not just any country in the world has such a park,” he said. “We hope to build more museums and show more of what we have kept collected in our archives, somewhere in the future.”