Secretive Ukrainian ex-pat Serhiy Bondarenko is leading the development of a five-star resort in a Vinnytsia town
Secretive Ukrainian expat Serhiy Bondarenko is leading the development of a fivestar resort in a Vinnytsia town. The $269 million project is backed by European investors. Both Boderenko and regional officials confirm the funding but neither would identify the investors.
Bondarenko, a Ukrainian citizen living in Lisbon, told the Post he was a project manager for the planned Khmelnyk Resort being built near eight Soviet-era sanatoriums. The 180-hectare complex will be situated in a forest near Khmelnyk, he added. It will include a five-star hotel with room for 300 guests, 450 cottages, a spa, the first 18-hole golf course in Ukraine, a Olympic-sized pool, tennis courts, fishing, horseback riding and a shopping center.
Oleksandr Chovgan, the Ukraine-based representative of the Khmelnyk Resort project, said the project was inspired by Bondarenko himself. “The idea of the project is to build a hotel and a professional-level sport complex near Khmelnyk, and also to show the natural beauty and richness of the region,” Bondarenko told the Post in a phone interview from Portugal. “I was in Khmelnyk two years ago with my parents and fell in love with the place. I found reliable partners there and started to develop the project,” Bondarenko added.
The tight-lipped Bondarenko said the resort, expected to open in 2011, is his first project in Ukraine. Construction is to start this year, with negotiations with two Chinese construction companies under way, he added. Bondarenko, 40, a self-described real estate consultant in Europe, declined to verify any company he has worked for, though he said he worked on similar projects in Africa and Latin America.
Ukrainian media suggested that Bondarenko was the investor backing the project. Bondarenko stressed he is not an investor nor wealthy enough to back such a project.
Khmelnyk, a popular health spa town in Soviet days, is renowned for its supposedly medicinal mineral waters.
