Newly opened Lithuanian seaport ready for business

KLAIPEDA - From now on, Lithuania will have two seaports on its western coast: Klaipeda State Seaport and Sventoji Seaport, which is 35 kilometers from Klaipeda and was launched last weekend.
Having carried out its restoration, Sventoji Seaport is able to accommodate small leisure boats, fishing boats and yachts, offering 72 quays in total in the basin breakwater. The seaport is expected to give a boost to tourism development in Sventoji, a settlement of 1,500 inhabitants, which, until now, has often been dwarfed by Palanga resort, its closest neighbor 10 kilometers away.

“Today is a big celebration in Sventoji. To be honest, it is very personal to me. Only a year ago, many could bet that it would be impossible to open Sventoji Seaport in June this year. However, Klaipeda State Seaport, which was the only one that could take on the challenge, has always been determined to open the seaport much earlier than the government had planned, that is to say, in 2015,” Eugenijus Gentvilas, director general of the Klaipeda State Seaport Authority said during the opening ceremony.

Both in Soviet times, and after the restoration of independence, there were a number of restoration projects at Sventoji Seaport, considering options for construction both in its former location and in other places, mostly northward from the current location.
In 1989, design documentation for Sventoji port restoration was prepared by Kaunas radio engineering factory Banga, planning to construct a 4–5 meter deep yachting port, then by Achema Group when constructing Butinge terminal. However, these plans stalled till the very end of the last millennium. Only in 1996 did the Klaipeda State Seaport Authority announce initial plans for the restoration of Sventoji seaport. A few years later, Palanga Municipality prepared a detailed plan, which was soon corrected. However, the work on its restoration had not been meant to happen just yet. Only in 2007 did Lithuania’s Seimas adopt the law on Sventoji Seaport. At the end of the year, having conducted public procurement procedures, private companies Geoprojektas & Co. and Hidroprojektas took on preparation of the engineering-geological mapping program, whereas private company Inzineriniai Tyrinejimai prepared digital topographic surveys.

In the beginning of 2009, in order to speed up the process, the Klaipeda Seaport Authority, in the name of its director general, Gentvilas, appealed to the government requesting it to transfer the land lot of Sventoji Seaport to the Port Authority so that it could use its assigned funds to restore Sventoji port. Granted the right, the Klaipeda Seaport Authority signed an agreement with a Spanish consulting company regarding preparations for a feasibility study of Sventoji Seaport. According to calculations by Spanish engineering, consulting and architectural firm Alatec, which prepared the feasibility study, the cost of the seaport restoration, encompassing two phases, would amount to 53 million euros, or over 180 million litas.

This year, the Klaipeda Port Authority signed a contract with the contractor Hidrostatyba, which prepared the technical project, installation of engineering networks and the mounting of floating pontoons. The total contract price was nearly 3 million litas; meanwhile, Latvian company BGS had performed dredging work - up to 3 meters in the entrance channel, up to 2 meters at the eastern quay and up to 3 meters and 2.5 meters at the western quay in order to adapt the port quays to moor small boats.
Overall, the first phase of the seaport restoration cost 4 million litas, while the cost of the entire project is set at over 180 million litas. “The 4 million litas is nothing compared with those multi-million litas works that are under way in Klaipeda State Seaport,” Gentvilas noted during the opening ceremony.

The implementation of the second phase of the restoration of Sventoji Seaport is due to be completed by 2015.
The Seaport opening ceremony attracted many high-profile authorities from ministries, Klaipeda State Seaport Authority and the Palanga mayor’s office. Arunas Staras, vice-minister of the Ministry of Communications, called Sventoji Seaport “an important piece of infrastructure,” while Raimundas Palaitis, minister of the Ministry of Interior, admitted that, in anticipation of the opening, his “tears were coming out.”

“I have been dreaming of this for ten years,” the minister acknowledged, wearing a camouflaged outfit.
However, those who have been closely following the development of Sventoji Seaport could not hold back their faint smiles upon hearing the minister’s words, as he himself, being Palanga’s mayor and a Seimas’ member for several tenures, was in a capacity to speed up the process.

While the sheer majority of the greeters seemed overwhelmed with emotion, Sventoji elder Eugenijus Cilinskas’ words were the most sobering: “It is not enough to open such a seaport. We all have to talk about it to our neighbors, relatives and friends all over in order to have the seaport busy. It will be disastrous if the seaport stays empty.”

Such cautionary words reflect well the current situation of the Sventoji settlement, which, in comparison with nearby Palanga, lacks funding for development of its infrastructure, and has been overshadowed by Palanga until now to such an extent that many local folks jokingly call it “a touch of  the Soviet-era,” emphasizing its comparative backwardness.
However, new Palanga Mayor Sarunas Vaitkus has promised repeatedly to exert efforts in enlivening Sventoji.

For the much-praised Gentvilas, director general of Klaipeda State Seaport Authority, who, certainly, has contributed the most to Sventoji Seaport and who plays it big in Klaipeda Seaport, Sventoji Seaport, some assert, is just a trinket or a nice toy that caresses his high-flying ego. “Obviously, he [Gentvilas] has done a lot, but prospects of having Sventoji Seaport hustling and bustling in the near future are just unrealistic. Sure, Gentvilas understands it. Reviving Sventoji should be a matter of much broader and complex efforts than just opening its seaport and waving in all directions, calling everyone to “Come over to Sventoji in yachts and boats.” I am just hoping that high-flying Gentvilas will not get fed up with its burdens and continue invigorating Sventoji,” a representative of a Ministry, who did not want his name to be disclosed, commented to The Baltic Times.

Asked by The Baltic Times whether the investments in Sventoji Seaport will ever pay off, Gentvilas was blunt with his answer: “That will never happen, as a project of this scale is just too big for a community like Sventoji. However, we should not look at things just from the prospect of “pay-off-or-does-not-pay-off,” as we all ought to have in mind the social, infrastructural and economic facets of the entire Sventoji picture and its further development.”

The so-called mooring fees set by the Ministry of Communications a few years ago are to generate money for Sventoji Seaport – from 500 to 1,000 litas for a boat per month, depending on size. However, just before the opening of the seaport, with criticism over the fee size mounting, the Ministry has slashed the fees by nearly half.

However, this is not sufficient for Sventoji fishermen, who own over 10 fishing boats and who will be supposed to pay as much as 200 litas in seaport fees per month. “Oh, c’mon. When someone gets used to using the basin breakwater for free, any fee will look big. We have built a nice and well-equipped seaport whose fees are the smallest in the entire Baltic Sea, and I hope yacht and leisure boat owners will appreciate that,” Gentvilas said.

So far, three yacht owners have expressed their desire to moor in Sventoji Seaport.