Tskaltubo Auction Sets $3.3 Million Medea Bid, Plus a $24 Million Rebuild Bill

Georgia is selling ten derelict Soviet sanatoriums in Tskaltubo, but the auction rules attach a construction bill to the purchase price. The state listed the properties on October 20, and online bidding closes on November 15. The Medea building, a neoclassical structure photographed often by Western press, carries a $3.3 million opening price and a commitment to spend $24 million on a five-year renovation.

That renovation must produce at least 120 guest rooms, plus conference halls and restaurants. The other nine sanatoriums open between $1 million and $3.5 million, with investment pledges attached to each. During the Soviet era, holiday makers rode direct trains from Moscow to bathe in Tskaltubo's warm mineral water, which carried mild radioactivity.

Frederic Le Fichoux, a commercial real estate specialist who worked on a 2020 study of the town's revival, said the terms cannot fix the town's core problem. "If you are one investor and you buy, you renovate that property that you bought, you turn it around," he said, "but then the rest of the destination is still kept as a ruin." He said the town needs public spending on roads and access alongside private money for the buildings.

The state has run this play before. Seven buildings sold at earlier auctions, and three have since reverted to state control. Medea came back in 2024 after the buyer missed contractual obligations. In October 2019, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country's wealthiest man and founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, said the spas were "depressing" and pledged a "full-scale rehabilitation" that never happened. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said on October 20 the plan fell away because of the pandemic and what he called "de facto sanctions" against Ivanishvili.

David Sichinava, a Canada-based academic who grew up around the buildings, said redevelopment faces an "all or nothing" choice. He noted Tskaltubo does not charge casino operators permit fees, which run as high as $1.9 million a year elsewhere in Georgia. "Balneology (the science of therapeutic use of baths) alone can't really support the kind of tourists that this town can host," he said. Since the 1990s the buildings have housed people displaced by the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia; Sichinava estimates 100 to 200 remain. Madonna Mushkudiani moved into one structure after fleeing Abkhazia in 1992 and left for an apartment in 2023, though she still visits former neighbors. "We miss every minute we spent there. It was our second home," she said.