Gazprom City

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Gazprom City (Russian: Газпром-сити) 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 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]

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 (including Norman Foster and Rafael Viñoly), 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.^[3]

[edit] References and notes

[edit] See also

• Saint Petersburg
• Gazprom Neft
• Gazprom
• Alexei Miller
• Valentina Matviyenko
• Supertall
• Skyscraper

[edit] Links

• Gazprom Neft Willing to Invest in Real Estate by Pavel Nikiforov and Maria Shevchenko, Kommersant, June 8, 2006.
• Skyscraper row hits city of tsars, BBC News, November 28, 2006.
• Russian Window on the West Reaches for the Sky by Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, November 28, 2006.
• Moscow Lashes Gazprom’s St. Pete Development Plans by Elena Gerusova, Kommersant, November 25, 2006.
• Gazprom CEO Picks New Symbol for St. Pete by Kira Dolinina and Elena Gerusova, Kommersant, December 2, 2006.
• Gazprom Winner is ‘Corn on the Cob’ by Kevin O’Flynn and Galina Stolyarova, The St. Petersburg Times #1227 (93), December 4, 2006.
• Official Site of the Gazprom-City project
• More Information about Gazprom City
• (Russian) Gazprom City-related newsblock at Fontanka.ru

This article or section contains information about expected future buildings or structures. It is likely to contain information of a speculative nature, and the content may change as building construction begins and new information becomes available.