Okhta Centre Investors Met UNESCO Delegation08.12.2007In Moscow representatives of the co-investor of the Okhta Centre Project met a delegation of the UNESCO World Heritage Center headed by Mr. Francesco Bandarin. At the meeting Gazprom Group was represented by Sergey Kupriyanov, Deputy Head of Information Policy Department of JSC Gazprom, Alexander Dybal, Vice-president of JSC Gazprom Neft, and Nikolay Tanayev, Director General of Okhta Community and Business Center, Ltd.
Tony Kettle and Philip Nikandrov, the architects of RMJM Company, presented a conception of the Okhta Centre community and business area. In the discussion participated Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, the executive secretary of the RF Commission for UNESCO, Igor Makovetskiy, President of Russian Committee of Global Heritage, Vera Dementyeva, Head of the State Committee for the Supervision, Use, and Preservation of Monuments of History and Culture for St. Petersburg.
“This meeting has become the first stage of scheduled consultations with UNESCO operating units. We plan to hold such consultations in the course of the project implementation. It is important that we have interested the UNESCO representatives in such consultations. We laid out our vision of the situation to the delegation of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, which consists in necessity to replenish the municipal budget for preservation of the historical center of St. Petersburg, in particular by attracting large taxpayers to the city and creating conditions for their work. A community and business center ought to be constructed beyond the historical center in order to withdraw the functions of a business center that are alien to the old city. And then a historical center could function harmonically as a museum in the open air”, Alexander Dybal commented the results of the meeting.
In the course of the meeting the investors of the project noted that at that stage there was only an architectural conception of the Okhta Centre community and business area. RMJM’s architects have been working at the project design and upon completion in spring 2008 the materials will be presented to the public, including the representatives of the UNESCO World Heritage Center.
