Okhta Center

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Okhta Center model

Okhta Center (Russian: О́хта-це́нтр), known before March 2007 as Gazprom City (Russian: Газпро́м-си́ти), is a construction project of a business center in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It will include the first supertall skyscraper in the city.

On November 15, 2005, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Saint Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko announced that Sibneft is going to build the Gazprom City business center including a 396 meters high skyscraper with its headquarters on the right bank of the Neva River in front of Smolny Cathedral, despite the fact that current regulations forbid construction of a building of more than 42 (48 with expertise approval) meters high there.

On March 20, 2006, Gazprom and the city signed an agreement, under which Sibneft undertook to pay 20 billion rubles of taxes to the city annually after moving there, which was supposed to occur in the near future, while St. Petersburg agreed to allocate 60 billion rubles during ten years for the project construction. [1]

Alexei Miller claimed that he is "positive that St. Petersburg’s citizens will be proud of these new architectural masterpieces."^[1] However, the Director of the Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, has spoken out against the plan. The Saint Petersburg Union of Architects also voiced opposition to it in July 2006, as did many other citizens.^[2]

Projected view of the district

On December 1, 2006, Gazprom and the city authorities announced that the project of the British company RMJM London Ltd. had been chosen by a committee consisting of four foreign architects (in fact, three of the four architects, namely Norman Foster, Rafael Viñoly and Kisho Kurokawa, retired from the jury before it convened opposing to all of the shortlisted designs because of their height)^[3], four representatives of the St. Petersburg City Administration, including Matviyenko herself, and representatives of Gazprom: Alexei Miller, Valery Golubev (Deputy CEO Gazprom, Head of the Department for Construction and Investment of Gazprom, former Head of the Vasileostrovsky Administrative District of St. Petersburg) and Alexander Ryazanov (President of Gazprom Neft, fired on November 17 during the competition). The construction of the entire Gazprom City is supposed to be over by 2016.

As the historical centre of St. Petersburg is a World Heritage Site, in December 2006 UNESCO World Heritage Center Director Francesco Bandarin reminded Russia about its obligations to preserve it and expressed concern over the project.^[4] In 2007, the World Monuments Fund placed the historic skyline of St. Petersburg on its 2008 Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites due to the potential construction of the building.

In March 2007 the project was renamed from Gazprom City to Okhta Center (after the river of Okhta). It was also decided that Gazprom Neft would allocate 51% of funds for the construction project, while city budget would account for 49% only.[2]

[edit] References and notes

Okhta Center construction site. The inscription says: "Okhta Center is the project of XXI century". Three types of flags are there: of Saint Petersburg, of Russia and of Gazprom