Building Plans Upset Local Greeks
Published: August 1, 2012 (Issue # 1720)
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The planned building would include hotel rooms for visiting artists performing at the Oktyabrsky concert hall (above).
A new five-story business center and hotel complex due to appear next to the Oktyabrsky concert hall is causing consternation among the city’s Greek community as well as preservationists.
The design for the new building, set to be constructed on the former site of the hall’s ticket office, has already been selected and is currently being assessed by a state inspection. Protest against the center has been loudest from the St. Petersburg Greek community, which fears that the new project will obstruct the Ioannis Kapodistrias memorial located next to the ticket offices.
Nine architectural studios took part in the tender to design the building. The project’s investor, Solo, invited representatives of preservationist movements such as Living City and specialists of the State Cultural Heritage Committee onto the jury in an attempt to broaden public support for the project. The winning design was that of AMM studio, headed by Yury Mityurev, the city’s former chief architect. According to the studio, however, his authorship was unknown to the jury during the selection process. They claim that the design was selected because it is in harmony with the surrounding buildings.
This is a daring promise, as Grecheskaya Ploshchad (Greek Square, as the square in front of the concert hall is known) is already one of the city center’s oddest architectural ensembles. Surrounded by the neoclassical Children’s Hospital No. 19 and various eclectic 19th-century buildings, it used to be the setting of the Greek Dmitry Solunsky Church, which was adorned by multiple cupolas and was an emblem of the Byzantine building style in St. Petersburg. In a startling architectural metamorphosis, however, this building was torn down by the Soviets in 1961 and replaced by the concrete Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, a building that Joseph Brodsky, in a poem on that occasion, describes as an “ugly flat dash.”
Another item on the square’s architectural agenda during the last few years was the Greek Center, a business center located directly opposite from Oktyabrsky. The original early 19th-century three-story building was dismantled in 2007 and replaced by a glass cube behind a pseudo-restoration of the old facade. The new business center now to be built at 6 Ligovsky Prospekt is to achieve a similar synthesis between functional business space and architectural mimicry. Its architectural style is described by the studio as “classical.”
The idea to replace the ticket office pavilion with a multi-story building is not new, but had already been considered for about seven years. An earlier investor, Rolis, had already selected a project when the company had to be reorganized and the building rights fell to the management company Solo, which rejected the previous design. In 2011, Solo presented its present project to build a 4,305-square-meter building complex on the site. The first floor is to accommodate the ticket office, while the upper levels are to be divided between office space for concert hall staff and hotel space for visiting performing musicians.
The major opponent of the project is the Petersburg Greek community organization Petropolis. Since their embassy church was destroyed, the only traces still recalling their nation’s impact on the area are the name of the square and the adjacent street, Grechesky (Greek) Prospekt. In 2003, when the city celebrated its 300th anniversary, the community saw a bit of a consolation, with a statue being erected to commemorate Ioannis Kapodistrias, a diplomat who served in Russia under Alexander I and who later became the ruler of Greece. Kapodistrias currently looks contemplatively out over Ligovsky Prospekt from a small round plaza surrounded by greenery on the corner of the park area leading to Ulitsa Nekrasova.
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The Greek Dmitry Solunsky Church was torn down by the Soviets in 1961.
Harlampy Apachidy, chairman of the city’s Greek community, fears that the statue’s view of Ligovsky Prospekt — and with it, people’s view of him — will soon be blocked. “If this project is carried out, the monument will turn into an awkward architectural appendix of the five-story building’s right wing, and will be blocked from view from the side of Greek Square,” he was quoted by Fontanka.ru as saying.
The Petropolis community appealed to City Hall on June 22. The Greeks say they are not against the building project itself, they simply ask that efforts be made to preserve the visibility of the statue, for instance by transferring it into the middle of the square. So far, their appeal has gone unanswered.
Concern has also been expressed by the preservationist movement Living City, which is worried about the additional congestion the new complex would bring to the city center. “We think such a business center is totally unnecessary,” Living City speaker Antonia Yeliseyeva told The St. Petersburg Times.
“There will be more people and more cars, the building cannot provide parking space for all those cars, and the city is already overcrowded.”
Yeliseyeva expressed doubt that any changes would be made to the project, however.
“It is of course bad for the city, but it is a legal St. Petersburg project.”
Greek Square is located in Heritage Protection Zone 1, where only the demolition of buildings is prohibited, while new constructions are permitted up to a certain height limit.
A Solo representative requested for questions to be emailed to her, but had not responded as this newspaper went to press.