When I can back to Armenia after a seven year absence, one of the first things I noticed was the abundance of old abandoned or simply unfinished buildings. Many tourists note that as well. Frank Gardner, a British journalist writing for The Daily Telegraph, noted in a 2016 article that:
Driving out of the capital on my first morning, two things are immediately apparent. The abandoned, derelict factory buildings and the grim, Russian dormitory blocks surrounded by empty carcasses of old vehicles, rusting oil tanks and decrepit machinery overgrown with weeds. Armenia needs a clean-up.
Armenia does need a major clean up. Dozens of factories in Yerevan alone stand empty and give visitors the impression of a land with depressed economy.
An example of a Soviet-era abandoned building in the Hrazdan gorge. the large basalt building above is the Yerevan Wine Factory (known as “Noy”)
There are two large restaurants on the two sides of the stairway leading to the medieval monastery on the Sevan’s peninsula (former island). The left one, Parvana, from the Soviet-era, is dilapidated and seemingly abandoned, with broken windows. Ashot Erkat, the larger white restaurant on the right, was built relatively recently and is a prime destination for tourists who visit Sevan.
Some of these abandoned have been demolished to make space for more useful purposes. In the Arabkir district alone, two major factories have been replaced with malls owned by oligarchs. The Yerevan City supermarket, owned by Samvel Aleksanyan (“Lfik”) on Komitas Avenue has replaced the factory that used to produce milling machinery during the Soviet period, while Rio, a large mall on Hrachya Kochar Street owned by the Russia-based Samvel Karapetyan (“Tashir Samo”) has replaced the large area that the Soviet factory that produced precise instruments used to occupy.
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