Real Estate: You'll get used to it

Gazprom to St. Petersburg: It only hurts the first time.




One of the many lovable things about St. Petersburg is its lack of a glassy, modern downtown. Gazprom is about to change that in one fell swoop. Russia's state-owned natural-gas monolith will erect a glass tower on the right bank of the Neva River — the city's first skyscraper and an inevitable epic eyesore. At 300 meters high (984 feet), the so-called Gazprom City (the official name of the project has since been changed to the less irritating Okhta Center) will tower over the entire city at more than twice the height of the Peter and Paul Fortress. As for the shape of it, well… the winning design, by British firm RMJM, is colloquially referred to as "The Corncob" — among other, less printable, names. It's a Pyrrhic victory for the Brits, to say the least. Native architectural firms have boycotted the competition altogether, and a Japanese jury member resigned because he opposed all competing designs equally.

If Gazprom were a private company, Russian conservatives would have surely made it an icon of soulless capitalism. Since it's controlled by the Kremlin, though, the project looks less like a fat cat's trophy office, and more like those "pride-inspiring" architectural horrors the Soviet government used to unleash on its citizens. It's not like Gazprom is raising the Corncob on its own dime, anyway; Russia's none-too-wealthy Second City is covering 49 percent of the project's cost. “St. Petersburg should be happy that the number one company in Russia is coming to the city,” said governor Valentina Matviyenko by way of explanation. Oddly, despite the loud-and-clear order to rejoice, the people aren't. Some polls put the opposition to the project at an astonishing 90 percent.

Tony Kettle, the managing director of RMJM, has suggested that, instead of ruining the St. Petersburg skyline, the building will enhance it. "When you consider Paris, a city with an equally precious environment," he told St. Petersburg Times, "It has been made even more special by the 324-meter-high Eiffel Tower." We at Russia! have thought of several other precious environments the Gazprom Corncob could make even more special.