ShareIn St. Petersburg, most of whose center is protected by UNESCO, the presence of a monument building on a construction site is not uncommon. Most often, such cultural heritage sites are in very poor condition, collapsing before our eyes. And if previously many developers used loopholes to avoid restoring damaged monuments, in recent years the situation has been gradually changing.
In the Northern capital, according to the latest data from the Fund for Assistance to the Restoration of Historical and Cultural Objects in St. Petersburg, there are 9,034 buildings protected by law. This includes both cultural heritage sites and identified monuments. Moreover, the city committee for state control, use and protection of monuments is constantly adding new addresses to the list. Not all of them are located in the center of St. Petersburg: since the industrial belt of the city is many years old, it also preserves some pre-revolutionary and later buildings worthy of protection. In recent years, the city has been actively undergoing a redevelopment process, so they often end up on a construction site. And if we talk about the historical center of St. Petersburg, then there are cultural heritage sites literally at every step.
“We, as a developer who works a lot in the city center, meet with such sites and such projects, one might say, on a regular basis,” says Eduard Tiktinsky, Group President RBI. — In the last 10 years alone, this has included the reconstruction of a 1913 Krummel car garage on Divenskaya Street into a business center, a gas holder from 1881, a multi-level parking lot on Zaozernaya, a water tower of the Okhtinskaya paper-spinning factory from 1900 on Piskarevsky Prospekt and, of course, the Levashovsky bakery on Barochnaya — a unique monument of Soviet constructivism.”
According to the expert, the reconstruction of monuments in St. Petersburg is still a handful of projects per year, especially if we are talking about restoration financed by private investors. Such development requires special competencies and expensive technologies. Adaptation for modern use is accompanied by various risks and long lead times, all of which makes the economic efficiency of projects low. Therefore, private investors mostly prefer more efficient alternatives.
That is why the “Ruble per Meter” program, which was launched in 2019, is currently facing difficulties. According to its rules, the monument building goes to the winning bidder for a 49-year lease. The tenant carries out restoration work for 7 years and pays at the rate established at the auction. In the eighth year, he can apply to the property relations committee with an application to establish a minimum rental rate of 1 ruble per 1 sq.m per year. So far, work has been completed in two facilities. In 2020 – in the library of the Kolobov sawmill on Pesochnaya embankment. The work was carried out by specialists from Peter LLC, owned by Oktyabrsky Electric Car Repair Plant JSC. In 2022, the “Alexandrovsky Gate of the Okhtinsky Powder Plants” facility at 20 Khimikov Street was commissioned; the restoration was carried out by Teorema Management Company, which owns the Khimvolokno Research Institute, the tenant of the building.
But if, for example, the restoration of the last object cost 67 million rubles, now the amounts have increased significantly. Especially if the object is large and was previously in very poor condition. Thus, Setl Group recently completed a large-scale project to restore and adapt for modern use the Rope Shop with a water tower on the 25th line of Vasilyevsky Island, a monument of constructivism and a masterpiece of industrial architecture. The holding spent a total of 3 billion rubles on the work.
“The Rope Shop building was built in 1930 according to the design of the famous Soviet architect Yakov Chernikhov for the Krasny Nailer plant,” says Vladislav Shipunov, Head of the Special Projects Directorate Setl Group. — According to the author’s idea, the building stands out due to the contrast of the long, low volume of the workshop and the corner dominant of the water tower. During the Great Patriotic War, the building was badly damaged, and in 1951 the end facades were built on and most of the window openings were filled in on the façade facing the Maslyany Canal.”
It must be said that in those years the task was to restore buildings destroyed during the war as quickly and cheaply as possible. Therefore, the quality of the work carried out at that time led to the fact that the holding received the building in a deplorable condition. According to Vladislav Shipunov, the main problem during the restoration was the material used to fill the walls. Wall along the 25th line of V.O. and the walls of the tower were made of monolithic slag concrete. The cinder concrete was severely destroyed in places. This is a rare material for restoration, and methods for its restoration had to be developed.
Now the holding has restored the historical facade of the Rope Shop along the 25th line of Vasilievsky Island and restored the water tower while maintaining the configuration and dimensions of window and door openings, the design and glazing of the openings, and the concrete semicircular canopy above the entrance.
The reconstruction of the building from an industrial purpose into a business center made it possible to create an internal atrium – a horizontally elongated passage that unites office premises of 1–3 floors under a glass lantern. In the building, Setl Group will open a temporary exhibition dedicated to the history of the Rope Shop.
According to Eduard Tiktinsky, most of these objects cannot be profitable on their own. They pay for themselves only as part of an overall development project, including new residential construction. “For example, we invested more than 230 million rubles in the reconstruction of the gas tank, including adaptation for a new function – parking. And the income from the sale of parking spaces was only about 30%. More than 75 million rubles were invested in the work on the water tower, and in principle there is no commercial component as such,” the expert lists.
RBI’s investments in the large-scale reconstruction project of the Levashovsky bakery plant amounted to 1.2 billion rubles. The company understood that the presence of such a unique component in the project as a restored monument has a positive effect on the value of a “residential” square meter in the eyes of the buyer.
In addition to the obvious reason – high cost, there are few implemented restoration projects for another reason: the difficulty of adapting to modern functions due to the unusual configuration of the buildings. “Monuments, especially objects of industrial architecture, are all specific engineering and architectural structures, initially created for a specific task,” adds Eduard Tiktinsky. — Let’s take, for example, the Levashovsky bakery: its entire architecture is associated with a unique technological cycle of baking — this building was simply not intended for anything else. But at the same time, the architectural volumes, many structures, window openings – all of them were and are under the protection of KGIOP, they had to be preserved, even taking into account the fact that the functional purpose of the building has changed diametrically.”
However, despite all this, there are more and more such examples. Thus, the Baltic Commerce Group of Companies has completed work on the restoration of another world-famous monument of the constructivist era – the thermal power plant of the former Krasnoe Znamya knitting factory by Erich Mendelsohn at 57 Pionerskaya St./13 Korpusnaya St.. According to the company, according to the project agreed upon KGIOP, in 2016, work began to eliminate accidents and restore the facades. During this time, numerous emergency components and structures of the building were dismantled and replaced, a comprehensive restoration of the outer contour of the building was carried out with the elimination of later superstructures and replacement of window fillings, which ultimately made it possible to bring the thermal power plant to its original historical appearance. In addition, the building was equipped with a built-in transformer substation and a block gas boiler room.
It recently became known that nearby, on a neighboring site of the same factory, cultural heritage sites will also be restored: AAG received a construction permit in the fall of 2024. Part of the project is adaptation for modern use of cultural heritage sites. These are factory buildings, also designed by Erich Mendelssohn at the beginning of the 20th century. Non-residential premises will be used for offices on the ground floor, and apartments will be located above. There will also be a shopping and entertainment promenade: a restaurant street with a food hall.
On the 12th line of Vasilyevsky Island, the same developer AAG continues restoration work on a cultural heritage site – the mansion of Eduard Bremme – the so-called “vitamin pharmacy”. At the end of the 19th century, three brothers founded the Bremme Brothers factory of essential oils, essences and paints here. A wooden mansion with a mezzanine designed by architect Vladislav Karpovich became the administrative building of the plant. During the siege of Leningrad, the mansion was used to distribute vitamin rations, for which it was nicknamed the “vitamin pharmacy.” Completion of the main restoration work is planned for early autumn 2024.
There, on Vasilyevsky Island, on Kadetskaya Line, 21, BS Art Development Group is preparing to restore Bryullov’s mansion into a creative space. Subsequently, the building will house cafes and restaurants, co-working space, and an exhibition on the history of the mansion and the city. This is one of the objects of the “Ruble per meter” program. According to the terms of the auction, the company must complete the restoration within 7 years.
Another object on the island that will receive a new life is the “Owner’s Mansion” and “Boiler House”, which are part of the cultural heritage site “A.A. Tannery”. Paramonova” on the Kozhevennaya line. The restoration will be carried out by Setl Group.
The holding recently announced the start of work on the restoration of the famous Vega mansion on Oktyabrskaya Embankment. The building will be restored to its historical appearance and the staircase with caryatids will be recreated. The mansion of Georgy Wege is a building built at the end of the 19th century in the eclectic style on the territory of the former Kinovievsky ultramarine plant of this industrialist. The architectural monument was given to the Setl Group company in a practically destroyed state.
The restoration project and adaptation for office space, commissioned by Setl Group, was prepared by NIiPI Spetsrestavratsiya LLC – a positive conclusion was received from KGIOP. According to Maria Shapchenko, head of architectural and restoration workshop No. 2 of NIiPI Spetsrestavratsiya LLC, the condition of the monument’s structures is emergency. To bring a building into working condition, it is necessary to partially replace its structures, carefully and fragmentarily remove finishing parts, restore them and return them to their place. There is a lot of work ahead to recreate the facades. Their decoration will be done according to iconography, but it will be necessary to find a balance between what is obvious from historical materials and what is hidden on them.” It is planned to complete the restoration of the facades within a year, and then the object will be adapted for a modern function.
Margarita Yaremenko, specially for Fontanka.ru
