Will Stock Exchange
Set Example?
By Anna Shcherbakova
The new 67-meter tall building of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange seems to be jinxed. In the middle of June, just before it opened, the city’s town-planning council slammed the project for spoiling one of the best views in the city. Its height is 63.4 meters, in line with an agreement made with City Hall in 2002, while the latest legislation limits construction in this part of the city to a height of 48 meters. The town-planning council is known for its critical remarks on modern art, but has never before discussed a building that has already been built. Furthermore, its rulings have no legal power and are more like recommendations. For instance, it did not approve the project for the 396-meter tall Gazprom Tower, but it did not make any difference. It should be said, however, that the council has never been as insistent as this time. The week before last it discussed four ways of reducing the height of the stock exchange building by 3.68 meters to save the historic view of Vasilievsky Island. Architects remained dissatisfied with the options proposed by the contractor of the Stock Exchange, which has estimated its losses at several million dollars, but the decision has been made — the excessive part of the building should be terminated. There have been cases when completed buildings have been reduced in height, in both St. Petersburg and Moscow, though construction companies are not eager to publish such incidents. This time will be different, as the city and the rest of the world look set to watch the long saga of the stock exchange unfold. In the wake of criticism over the stock exchange, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has admitted several tall buildings in different areas of the city to be “architectural mistakes” and has asked officials to check whether they were built against the permission of the authorities, and reduce their height if they lack the necessary documentation. Development and construction are some of the most profitable and fast-growing industries in St. Petersburg. New buildings, some of them extremely ugly, are shooting up everywhere like mushrooms after the rain. The shortage of land is particularly acute in the districts of the historic center. Entrepreneurs will always find a way to make new buildings a bit higher and wider than permitted, so many of them have cause for concern in light of Matviyenko’s promise. At the same time, many people who are alarmed by the destruction of the old St. Petersburg were encouraged. For the first time, the political movement against this nightmare has been expressed. What prompted Matviyenko to speak out in this manner? According to unconfirmed rumors, one of the state’s top officials said he was shocked by the new image of his hometown. If that is true, builders will have long-term problems and the city will keep a lot of its historic buildings and landscapes. Another version was offered by the president of the stock exchange, who said he is suffering as a result of the competition to accommodate the newly-established exchange, which received another proposal after it had already agreed to occupy the new building. The ruling on the other buildings seems to suggest that the case of the ill-fated stock exchange is ultimately a one-off incident, rather than the change in City Hall policy for which many locals had hoped. Anna Shcherbakova is the St. Petersburg bureau head of business daily Vedomosti.
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