| Okhta Center (Russian: О́хта-це́нтр), known before March 2007 as Gazprom City (Russian: Газпро́м-си́ти), is a construction project of a business center in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It will include the first supertall skyscraper in the city. On November 15, 2005, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Saint Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko announced that Sibneft is going to build the Gazprom City Business Center. This includes a 396 meter-high skyscraper with its headquarters on the right bank of the Neva River, in front of the Smolny Cathedral, despite the fact that current regulations forbid construction of a building of more than 42 (48 with expert approval) meters high there. On March 20, 2006, Gazprom and the city signed an agreement under which Sibneft agreed to pay 20 billion rubles of taxes to the city annually after moving there, which was supposed to occur in the near future, while St. Petersburg agreed to allocate 60 billion rubles during ten years for the project's construction. Alexei Miller claimed that he is "positive that St. Petersburgs citizens will be proud of these new architectural masterpieces." However, the Director of the Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, has spoken out against the plan. The Saint Petersburg Union of Architects also voiced opposition to it in July 2006, as did many other citizens. |
