St. Petersburg’s construction and architecture committee permitted the state-controlled Gazprom gas giant to build a skyscraper on the Gulf of Finland, the company’s public and business center said on Friday.
Gazprom owns a plot of land in the area and plans to build a 470-meter tall office and an entire business center, Lakhta Center, nine kilometers to the northцest of the city center. In mid-July, a lower commission for land and construction recommended that the project be allowed.
The official limit for buildings in the area is 27 meters tall but the architecture committee said the limit would be extended to 500 meters for the Gazprom project.
The new Lakhta Center project will be built on an area of 140,000 square meters by 2018, and is designed to be a self-sufficient mini-town outside the St. Petersburg residential area.
The offices of the Gazprom Neft company, the oil arm of Gazprom, and other Gazprom subsidiaries will be at the center of the project.
Earlier, Gazprom wanted to build Okhta Center with a 400-meter tall skyscraper on the Okhtinskaya Cape in central St. Petersburg. The decision caused protests from archeologists and the company withdrew the project late last year and sold the plot of land.