Road to Abkhazia leads through Del Mar Pt. 2: B. Talley goes Atlantic with Black Sea tale...

Driving back down Abkhazia’s wending coast, Del Mar's Bruce Talley pointed to a series of decrepit, half-collapsed Soviet- era buildings. “I see a five-star hotel here,” he says, and “a family resort over there,” and “definitely something akin to a Club Med along the coast up here.” When a line of palm trees gives way to a view of the snowcapped Caucasus Mountains, Talley jabs my arm again. “Look! It’s like Big Sur meets Kauai!” And then he laughs. “Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch. But just wait. You’ll see. This place will change so fast.”

Editor's Note:

Ah-Ha Rancho Santa Fe News first found Del Mar businessman Bruce Talley at the local smashburger during a breif respite from his Black Sea entrepreneurial ventures. Talley has been working with the government of Abkhazia, a former province of Georgia that seceded in 1992. He has been working with the Abkhaz government to open its maginficent, untarnished Black Sea coastline to visitors and potential eco-friendly development.

Known for its mild climate, attractive beaches lapping up to towering mountain ranges, the nation of 220,000 citizens is a mere 30-minute drive from Sochi, Russia, the scene of the 2014 Winter Olympics. For more from Talley's look at them thar Abkhaz dreams, visit Bruce's blog at:   http://www.brucetalley.com/. Our previous coverage of Talley's stock and trade can be found at http://tiny.cc/92r55.

Now, Talley has gone viral with an Atlantic Monthly story appearing today, Friday, Feb. 18 on his effervescent Abkhazia efforts. Haley Sweetland Edwards, a journalist who covers Central Asia and the Middle East and currently lives in Tbilisi, Georgia, profiled Talley for the Atlantic...

Boca on the Black Sea

An American developer seeks to create the “Florida of the Caucasus.”

By HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS

"THE REAL-ESTATE developer doesn’t seem to see the bullet holes in the cement wall behind him. Or the mortar-scarred apartment buildings. Or the half-bombed mansions where trees sprout through wallpapered living rooms. All the real-estate developer seems to see in Abkhazia, this breakaway territory wedged between Georgia and Russia along the Black Sea, is opportunity.

“This place could be the Florida of the Caucasus,” Bruce Talley says, jabbing my arm with excitement as we walk between two filthy concrete hotels. Gorbachev, Khrushchev, and Stalin all built vacation homes in the area, their porches overlooking a string of empty beaches, turquoise water, and looming mountains that tinge peach at sunset. “This is the ideal subtropical paradise for 145 million Russians, and there is nowhere for them to stay.”

Puss TV - Watch Video: Abkhazian vew of dispute with Georgia, posted Jan. 23, 2011

Watch Video - Watch Video Georgian view of the Abkhazian situation, posted Feb. 13, 2011.

The fact that Abkhazia, a piece of land roughly the size of Puerto Rico, claims to be an independent nation; that Georgia vehemently claims it as its own; that a formidable queue of Russian tanks along the Georgian border defends its asserted sovereignty; that hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled from here in the past two decades, leaving their empty homes to crumble in the beautiful sunshine—these are all merely matters of detail.

Talley, a South Dakota farm boy who served a stint in Alaska as a crab fisherman, made millions as a bond salesman in California, enjoying a lifestyle that afforded him Porsches (plural) and a Ferrari (metallic blue).

He got into real-estate development six years ago and moved to southern Russia, convinced that a fortune can be made here (he’s currently developing a shopping center in Krasnodar).

In November, after receiving a personal invitation from Abkhazia’s de facto prime minister, Talley became the first American real-estate developer to open a firm here. (“We need Western investment,” Prime Minister Sergei Shamba told me. “Bruce is good for us.”) Talley now blogs, tweets, and maintains both a YouTube channel and a Facebook fan page—all to promote Abkhazia.

Talley’s moment of opportunity traces back to the confused crack-up of the Soviet Union, when the region of Abkhazia was incorporated into the new nation of Georgia. Independent-minded Abkhazians promptly set up their own government and managed to stave off Georgian authority. For most of the past 20 years, though, Abkhazia’s economy has been in a deep freeze, stymied by war with Georgia in the early ’90s and then by international blockades.

For more, visit the Atlantic's full story here...