Vyborg District Set for New City Bus Station
Construction of a multi-functional commercial and residential complex including an intercity bus terminal, park-and-ride lots, and shopping center is to begin soon in the northwest of St. Petersburg by STEP Construction Group and affiliated companies.
This week, St. Petersburg authorities allocated two land plots in the Vyborg district measuring eight hectares in total to STEP Group's affiliate, Schongauer Investburo (SIB) which will be responsible for the 11-month planning process in the city's Parnas industrial zone. Vidiy Zheleznov, SIB's marketing director, said that the planned intercity bus terminal is a distinguishing feature of the project.
City Hall insisted on transportation infrastructure such as park-and-ride lots being part of the new project, Zheleznov said. "The only bus terminal in St. Petersburg is inconveniently located on the Obvodny Canal. The new construction will solve several existing problems of transportation to the north of the Leningrad Oblast, Karelia and Finland." Built in 1963 and renovated in 2003, the bus terminal on the Obvodny Canal in downtown St. Petersburg handles a total of 160 buses a day on domestic routes as well as 20 international routes, and is notorious for sporadic transportation subject to delays caused by traffic jams.
The new center in the Vydorg District will be partly modeled on Finland's Kamppi Center, which is acknowledged to be Helsinki's new downtown hub for commercial and residential real estate. The largest single construction site in the history of Finland, Kamppi Center was a four-year project and involved complex and extensive redevelopment of the Kamppi district in downtown Helsinki. One of the first of its kind in Europe, the center combines the commercial need for a streamlined, optimized shopping environment with the necessary supply of customers due to maximum accessibility. The complex was opened in stages, with the new transportation facilities - the Kamppi metro station entrance, central and long-distance terminals for local and intercity buses - having opened early June 2005, while the six-floor shopping center including a supermarket, shops, restaurants, night clubs and service points, and elite offices and residential apartments opened in March 2006.
The new multifunctional center in St. Petersburg will consist of B-class offices occupying a total area of 160 thousand square meters, conference rooms and a hotel. The construction of shopping areas will be a secondary feature of the project since the district is abundant with shopping centers such as Mega and Grand Canyon. STEP will bear all the expenses involved in the design and planning of the project, and the estimated $300 million construction costs will be covered by investments from a large western foundation, whose identity has not yet been disclosed.
Analysts almost unanimously call this commercial and transportation complex a unique construction with promising prospects.
Yekaterina Markovets, consultment director at Arin real estate agency, predicts the project's pay-back period at 8-9 years and subsequent annual profitability at 15 percent.
regards the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg as one of the most attractive for office real estate developers. "On the one hand, spacious industrial territories available to development companies are equipped with pre-constructed engineering infrastructure which may be purchased at a reasonable cost. On the other hand, prospective tenants will appreciate and enjoy the proximity to the historic part of the city and good transportation accessibility."
According to Fyodorov, all business centers that are built in the Vyborg district are currently rented out very quickly, and the demand will most likely continue during the next few years. "At the same time, to compete with numerous similar projects, a developer has to implement exceptional features to make their project stand out from its competitors. Underground and multistory parking lots, catering and business service facilities, and residential areas might be options to consider. As a multi-functional complex, the project in the Vyborg district will be a success," Fedorov said.
SIB's marketing director Zheleznov said that the exact terms and cost of the construction will be available once the planning research for the center is complete.
Yevgeny Rozhkov