Vladimir Potapov

The construction of the Moscow-City Business Center should be completed in 2007. This was stated by Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov at the meeting of the Town-Planning Council.

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ccording to its initiators, establishing the Moscow-City International Business Center is today’s largest business project in the world’s town-planning. Along with a complex of buildings and convenient transport thoroughfares this Center will include all basic elements of the modern market infrastructure: a satellite communication, a computer network and a wide range of information services. It is intended to become a connecting link between the London and Tokyo Stock Exchanges. By estimates of Moscow’s Chief Architect Alexander Kuzmin, about 125,000 people are expected to visit the Business Center daily.
Moscow-City is to be located at the river bend on the territory totaling about 100 hectares, of which 60 hectares are earmarked for new building structures. This is the only place that is relatively close to the city downtown suitable for a large-scale architectural ensemble. The management company to develop and implement the project is City JSC established with the support of the Moscow Government in 1992.
The key element of the Moscow-City architectural composition is to be a 115-storey tower called Russia that will be 600 m high. Besides, there are plans to build up between 15 and 20 skyscrapers. There will by parking lots for 23,000 cars, of which 3,000 cars could be parked at the complex’ center.
The history of this ambitious project dates back to the beginning of the previous decade. That time the new city administration, which replaced the Soviet authority and called itself the Moscow Government, was looking for ways to assert itself in full force. The idea to establish a business center for representatives of the emerging Russian business and international business circles came up just at the right time. The project’s developers were taking into account the experience of Paris, London, Tokyo and New York, though in contrast to Wall Street Moscow-City was originally conceived as multi-functional: its structure should organically include both office buildings and hotels, entertainment and sports centers.
Now, 10 years later, Moscow-City represents not only a grandiose construction site but also a prototype of a new city district. Independent sources of energy supply are set up, highways, high-speed ground motor ways and road junctions, including a subway interchange station in the underground part of the Park-City multifunctional complex. The Bagration retail-and-pedestrian bridge as well the Tower-2000, a 34-story office complex, have already been completed. In December 2003 a hotel with an aqua-park will be completed.

Plan of Complex of Moscow International Business Center called Moscow City

Of course, such town-planning projects that are changing the existing image of cities and habitual way of life are inevitably met with opposition. Moscow’s history has also many examples in this respect. It would be worth to recall at least upheavals that accompanied building the Palace of Councils in the 1930s on the site of the Temple of Christ, the Savior, which was blown up and is now restored. The implementation of this impudent project was stopped not only by the war, which demanded the mobilization of all national resources, but also by a resolute aversion of native Muscovites to the very idea of having a cyclopean structure that would be reigning over the whole historic center of the ancient city. In the 1960s there was no needed support for the project developed by a group of young innovative architects. Called "City in the Clouds" this project provided for building gigantic towers outside the city. Not all Muscovites are delighted by Moscow-City as well considering it kind of little New York just 3.5 km from the Kremlin.
It should be noted that, on the whole, the city dwellers have already felt a strong anger with architectural innovations of the Moscow Government and, in particular, the annoyance by its unceremonious behavior shown recently through erecting pretentious monuments and making decisions to liquidate the history-related buildings.
The future 600-m high skyscraper does not only break aesthetic habits of Muscovites but worries many as an attractive site for attacks by the international terrorism, if one is to remember the tragic events of 09.11. in the U.S. and explosions of apartment buildings in Moscow. Although Mikhail Posokhin, the general director of the company Mosproject-2, which is doing the construction works on the business center, expressed his optimism stressing the confidence that "terrorist acts will not stop the technological progress", skeptics were not much convinced.
As for the project’s lobbyists, the only serious problem that they are facing is the lack of investments. The Moscow Mayor’s Office decided to attract investors by its own example. There are works underway to build the "government district" in the "City" with the space totaling 215,000 square meters, where 7,500 office workers from different departments, including probably members of the Moscow City Duma, will be based. In the opinion of the idea’s originators, the prospect to work near the Mayor’s Office will make the surrounding territory more attractive to businessmen. Besides, there will be one more chance to appease the public. The decision to move to the "City" The Moscow Mayor’s Office depicts as a "really historic" step, since it will help free the city’s center from an excess of administrative and business structures restoring its historic and cultural function.

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The "Moscow-City" transport scheme will provide a convenient and speedy access to the complex of offices and administrative buildings. It includes: – the existing pedestrian bridge across the Moscow-river; – the part of the "third belt", the recently built motor road; – the construction of new multi-lane high-speed motor routes connecting the city’s business center with the city’s main transportation arteries; – the construction of two new subway stations and a subway station with an interchange station at the complex’s center; – the construction of a high-speed out-of-street transportation system to the Sheremetievo airport; – the establishment of the principally new, effective and safe system of delivering cargo by railway, motor vehicle and river transport.

However that might be, efforts of the Mayor’s Office to attract wide attention to the "City" project are already bringing results. In the words of Moscow’s chief architect Alexander Kuzmin, except the Russia Tower that still has no investor, the rest of the project’s sites has already been under construction. These works are expected to be completed in the forthcoming four years. Not only Russian architects but also their colleagues from the U.K., the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany and Italy are taking part in implementing this business project.
There is still a hope that, as time goes by, Muscovites will get used to the skyscrapers of the "Moscow-City", just as Parisians grew accustomed to the Eiffel Tower, which they also gave a hostile reception to at the beginning.