Last week, the Vedomosti newspaper published an exclusive piece in which, referring to a high-ranking official of the mayor's office, it announced that a Parliamentary Center would be built on the site of the demolished Rossiya hotel. As the newspaper writes, now negotiations are underway to transfer the site to the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation, however, this information has not yet been confirmed in the department itself.
Let us remind you that the hotel has already been demolished by 90 percent. The demolition stopped when, as a result of litigation, the city terminated the contract with the investor of the Norman Foster and Mosproekt-2 project, the ST Development company, Shalva Chigirinsky. Vedomosti emphasizes that if a new project is implemented, a single complex of protected buildings from Zaryadye to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior will appear on the embankment of the Moskva River, which is convenient in terms of communications for officials, but isolates a huge area in the very center of the city from ordinary citizens. It is assumed that the Parliamentary Center will include both chambers of parliament, as well as the structures serving them, scattered throughout the city, residential buildings for deputies from other cities and sports and leisure infrastructure. In general, as Lenta.ru reminds, the idea of creating a Parliamentary Center has been actively discussed for several years. At one time it was supposed to be located on the site of the Krasnaya Presnya stadium (behind the White House), then in the Moscow-City MIBC, then in the area of the Zvenigorodskoye highway and Strelbischensky lane, and last year a variant of the complex of buildings of the Military Academy of Missile Forces on Moskvoretskaya was discussed embankment.
Experts received the news ambiguously. The defenders of historical Moscow fear the appearance of a new gigantic structure in Zaryadye: as Professor Natalya Dushkina noted during a discussion on Radio Liberty, this idea completely refutes the urban planning line that the Moscow mayor undertook to pursue, namely, the termination of any construction in the historical center. ECOS member Alexei Klimenko proposed to find a place for the Parliamentary Center in existing buildings near the Kremlin, and Arkhnadzor coordinator Konstantin Mikhailov is confident that the complex will not only worsen the transport problem, but also deprive the city of already few public spaces. But the project is fully supported by deputy Sergei Mitrokhin, who, according to him, proposed this idea to the president back in 2009.
The news about the construction of the Parliamentary Center really stands out from a number of recent urban planning events, more often associated with the cancellation of projects than with their approval. Thus, over the past weeks, two more large-scale construction projects - on the squares of the Belorussky and Paveletsky railway stations - fell under the revision of investment contracts concluded by the previous administration of the city, which has been ongoing since autumn. The newspaper "Vedomosti" informs about the intention of the mayor Sobyanin to cancel the project of a shopping complex started in 2007 under the Tverskaya Zastava square, which threatened with a transport collapse on Leningradka. The city will buy the project from the investor - the AFI Development company and will reimburse the expenses for the construction of the interchange. The publication reminds that according to the initial plans in the Tverskaya Zastava area, in addition to the shopping complex, they were also going to build several business centers, office and residential buildings and a hotel. Now the place of stores will be taken by underground passages and parking. Sobyanin's decision is commented on by the Slon.ru portal and the recently revived Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper, which also reminds of other abandoned projects - the Moscow Region collider (the accelerator-storage complex of the Institute of High Energy Physics in the Moscow Region town of Protvino), the Khovrinskaya hospital and the water park on Aminyevskoye Shosse.
And the deputy mayor of Moscow for urban planning policy and construction, Marat Khusnullin, in an interview with RIA Novosti, announced a change in the project on the square of the Paveletsky railway station. Now it has been decided to build a five-tiered underground parking, two ground floors of shops within walking distance and a cafe. The square will be improved, and the adjacent Kozhevnicheskaya and Dubininskaya streets will be reconstructed. But whether Pushkinskaya Square will be reconstructed is still unclear: according to Khusnullin, it is necessary to once again conduct an examination of the organization of traffic there and only after that make a final decision.
Two large analytical materials on the urban planning policy of Mayor Sobyanin appeared in the Expert magazine. Both articles try to answer the question: why did the mayor launch an attack on the building complex? And in both cases, the authors (Ilya Stupin and Semyon Doronin) come to the conclusion that the current bans and revisions are a correct and timely solution to the problem of “Luzhkov's legacy”. However, the further steps of the mayor, according to the authors, do not have a clear algorithm. For example, a ban on construction within the Third Ring can only increase the disproportion: "jobs in the center - housing in the outskirts", which, in turn, will aggravate the transport situation in the city.
By the way, in addition to revising investment contracts, the new city administration also managed to audit historic buildings and estimated the costs of their restoration and preservation. BFM.ru tells about this in detail. It turned out that 139 monuments are in disrepair, while the restoration of each object, according to the head of the Moscow Heritage Committee, Alexander Kibovsky, may require up to 2-3 billion rubles. In this regard, the authorities intend to oblige the tenants of historic buildings to take on security obligations simultaneously with the contract for the right to use the object. In addition, the Moscow Heritage Committee has completed the approval of the boundaries of about 1,300 capital monuments, which will be included in the General Plan and the rules of land use and development. Reported by RIA Novosti.
Meanwhile, the territories of the monuments and the associated protected zones, any construction in which is prohibited by federal law, are increasingly becoming the cause of high-profile proceedings in the regions. Over the past week, several articles have appeared in the press at once, which describe how local administrations "cope" with security encumbrances that interfere with new development. Thus, at the insistence of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation will revise the legislation on historical settlements, establishing its specific boundaries within the city and removing redundant approvals. Moreover, until the adoption of the amendments, the resolution on the inclusion of St. Petersburg in the list of specially protected settlements has been frozen, the Kommersant newspaper emphasizes. The authorities of Pskov went even further: on the initiative of the local committees for tourism and culture, they decided to replace the single protected zone of the historical settlement with single zones around 11 "main" monuments. Moreover, the competition for their development, as reported by the local newspaper "Pskov province", has already passed. Finally, in Veliky Novgorod, the administration announced that construction in the historical part had become a "chronic problem" for them. Developers are mainly hindered by the cultural layer of the city, taken under protection back in 1969 at the initiative of Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and head of the Novgorod archaeological expedition Valentin Yanin. Difficulties also arise during construction in security zones - for example, near the walls of the Antoniev Monastery, where they do not allow the construction of a mini hotel. According to Rosokhrankultura, which is in charge of all these issues, historical cities should have historical and archaeological reference plans - then the investor will know exactly where to build and where not.
Although there was no place for Moscow in the list of historical settlements, capital investors are struggling with security zones no less fervently. It is believed that the status of a landmark, for the introduction of which the Moscow Heritage Committee advocates, can provide reliable protection from their claims to the historical environment. However, Konstantin Mikhailov, in an analytical article in Expert, believes that this can lead to even more dire consequences, since the requirements for design on the territory of the monument in this case will be determined not by the law, but by the committee itself. And Arkhnadzor has a reason not to trust the latter too much, especially after the defeat at the recent public council, where the authorities decided to continue the reconstruction of the Helikon-opera theater. More details about this are given by "Moscow News" and Gazeta.ru.
Meanwhile, the topic of preserving the rapidly disappearing cultural heritage is increasingly being discussed at the federal level. In particular, on March 21, parliamentary hearings were devoted to it in the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The parliamentarians paid special attention to the problems of restoration, the quality of which, according to RIA Novosti, is going to improve, first of all, by separating it into a separate type of economic activity. Alexander Kibovsky also noted that the practice of restoration of monuments must be brought to uniformity. An article on the Arkhnadzor website dedicated to the restoration of religious buildings tells about the consequences of the lack of order in this industry.
Ogonyok published an interesting article about the fate of the monument on Lubyanka Square. Ever since the “iron Felix” was taken away from here, discussions periodically arise about erecting a monument here to some other historical figure. “Lubyanskaya square from an architectural point of view was the most“made”, European square of the capital, - the edition of the architectural critic Grigory Revzin quotes. - It's even a shame: an ideal plastic solution and at the same time, the most terrible one - with an ideological one. There is an executioner, and next to it is a children's toys store …”. However, experts have not yet chosen a worthy character. One of the last discussed was a monument to Ivan III - "the collector of Russian lands", but his Commission on monumental art under the Moscow City Duma did not dare to erect in the end.
The article "Warehouse of Culture" by Grigory Revzin himself was published in "Kommersant-Vlast" and is dedicated to the projects of the depositories of the three largest cultural institutions of the capital - the Moscow Kremlin Museums, the Russian State Library and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The critic considers the desire to "build on his estate" several hundred thousand square meters of storage space "a manifestation of feudalism." Revzin appeals to the European experience of building such structures outside the city and calls on museum workers and officials to use common sense.
