While we are fighting wars, Russia rebuilds itself......and your gas money is making it possible. Doesn't that make you proud?
Booming Russia remakes Moscow's heart
By David Holley
Los Angeles Times
Work proceeds on Moskva-City, a complex a few miles from the Kremlin that will feature offices, hotels, apartments, restaurants, shops and entertainment centers, with about 25 high-rises.
MOSCOW — For centuries, Red Square and the Kremlin have been the heart of Moscow. But a 21st-century downtown is rising, with skyscrapers set to reshape the image of Europe's largest city.
The $10-billion "Moskva-City" complex of offices, hotels, apartments, restaurants, shops and entertainment centers will feature about 25 high-rises, including at least seven buildings taller than any others in Europe.
Dominating the site will be the 2,008-foot Russia Tower, which will be one of the tallest buildings in the world and is due for completion in 2012. The rest of the center is scheduled to open in 2009 and 2010.
Capital officials have been working on the Moskva-City project since 1990, but few took it seriously until recently. Fueled by an oil-based boom in Russia's economy, the 148-acre site now is a place of frenzied construction.
"When I started doing this in 1990, Moscow shops had nothing on their counters," Deputy Mayor Iosif Ordzhonikidze said.
"The country lived very poorly. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, hot spots emerged and refugees came to Moscow. In 1991, when I said we will be building this Moskva-City and showed the first drawings, nobody would believe it."
One purpose of the project is to keep the demand for office space from driving other activities out of central Moscow, said Gennady Sirota, head of the city agency that designed the complex situated on the banks of the Moscow River 2 ½ miles from the Kremlin.
"Russia is very rapidly getting integrated into the outside world," Sirota said. "Naturally the living function of the center of the city began gradually to be replaced by office functions. ... Moscow was faced with the task to create a business center analogous to La Défense in Paris or Canary Wharf in London."
The site, also known as the Moscow International Business Center, is divided into 20 plots where Russian and foreign investors are putting up buildings designed by their own architects but coordinated with Sirota's office.
"The design level of the entire complex is very high-level. It's good. It will be much higher-level than La Défense or Canary Wharf," said Frank Williams, a New York-based architect whose company is working with a Russian company on the 1,246-foot-tall Mercury City Tower.
The Russia Tower will taper like a pyramid, and some of the other skyscrapers will have curved exteriors or outer walls leaning at an angle.
The 712-foot Wedding Palace Tower, a multifunctional building that will provide the service implied by its name, is designed to twist dramatically as it rises.
The Moscow city government will move to the site, which also will boast an aqua park with indoor beach usable even in the bleakest winters.
The complex, expected to draw 500,000 people a day, will have a large open plaza roughly the size of Red Square at its center.
Space is divided roughly into 60 percent for offices, 10 percent for hotels, 10 percent for apartments and 20 percent for shops, restaurants, the aqua park and other entertainment facilities or services.
"We tried to create a situation where after 6 p.m., this will not become a dead city like many business centers in the world, where doors get locked, people leave and the buildings stand there dark," he said.
"We wanted our Moskva-City to work nonstop. A big number of shops will be open round-the-clock, and the aqua park will work until late. In summer, the Moscow River will be a transportation route practically the whole night."
Direct rail lines will link the center with two of Moscow's airports, with one line due for completion in 2009 and the other in 2010. An eventual link to the third main airport also is planned.
"You will be able to come here, check in your luggage, park your car, get through customs, get on the train and end up on the airplane," Ordzhonikidze said.
An underground tunnel will link the complex to a nearby port on the river. Goods will be unloaded there from barges, railway cars or trucks and loaded onto unpiloted capsules set on rails to be brought through the tunnel, which links to elevators opening in the basements of all the high-rise towers.
Floodlights will bathe the towers in colors at night.
The high-level design and grand scale of Moskva-City reflects the wealth that Russia enjoys from oil, natural gas and other resources, Williams said.
"The energy of cities goes through cycles," he said. "This is Moscow's time."
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