MOSCOW AND ST. PETERSBURG ARE TONING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF COOPERATION WITH THE UAE IN THE REAL ESTATE SPHERE. THE NUMBERED CAPITAL AT THE HEAD OF ITS BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC MAYOR HAS ALREADY DEVELOPED CONTACTS WITH LOCAL DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES FOR THE CREATION OF SEVERAL LARGE-SCALE PROJECTS IN MOSCOW.
On the basis of Russian-Emirate interaction, the city satellite will grow for the first time in the Moscow suburbs by 12 thousand inhabitants. Work on building a city in a pine forest near the Moscow Canal in the Khimki region will begin next year. In the city satellite it is planned to build 4,500 houses and villas, schools, shops and entertainment complexes, to equip recreation areas. According to our magazine, construction will be completed in the next seven years. Its cost is estimated at about a billion dollars. Moreover, it is expected that the Russian and Emirate parties will have equal shares.
The cool, rainy, but beautiful and stylish northern capital seeks to keep up with the rich and pathos "porphyric" rushing toward the future. In March, a delegation of St. Petersburg City Hall led by St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko visited Dubai with several dozen people. Petersburgers as a whole team worked fruitfully in the emirate, which weary of the Guinness Book with its records. They have established good political contacts at a high level and have established close business ties with the largest emirate state and private companies and leading entrepreneurs. The northerners liked the hermits. Emirates liked their ideas and suggestions. The delegation spent four days in Dubai and turned around at local construction sites, like a squirrel in a wheel, as much as possible in a city packed with vehicles, where for every two inhabitants there is one car. Perfectly looking in an outfit chosen with great taste, in a hurry, but absolutely calm and confident, perfectly tuned Valentina Matvienko found a little over five minutes to meet with the correspondents of Russian Emirates magazine. The meeting took place in the early morning at the Al Qasr Hotel, surrounded by palm trees and decorated with monuments of sporting horses.
The mayor of St. Petersburg, who worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as the Russian ambassador until joining the Russian government, who left to return to the banks of the Neva, immediately took a very precise political note in a brief conversation. She noted that "the foundations of Russian-Emirate cooperation laid during the visit of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, to the United Arab Emirates last September, became a good basis for the talks and served to build mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation between St. Petersburg and Dubai." She called the visit a success and explained its achievements "by the active development of political ties between the Russian Federation and the UAE, the growing interest in Russia from the Emirate’s business community." According to the governor, "members of the government of the northern capital and the leaders of the largest construction companies in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region will bring home many useful and interesting things from the United Arab Emirates."
The St. Petersburg delegation, which included vice-governors, members of the city’s government, heads of major construction companies, met with the chairman of the Emirate’s parliament, the owner of the bank and the largest local billionaire Abdel Aziz Gureyr. She got acquainted with the work of the Dubai municipality and the local stock exchange, held talks with the heads of leading development companies and representatives of the Dubai women's business. In the latter case, the guests from Russia were very interested in the relations of the wife of the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Dubai Sergey Krasnogor with the female elite of the emirate.
St. Petersburg builders were interested in visiting the leading construction sites created in local sands and waters, such as the world high-altitude record holder Burj Dubai ("Dubai Tower"), the man-made archipelago The World ("World") in the Persian Gulf and other construction sites.
In negotiations with Emirates President Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, whose meeting prevented our conversation from continuing, the issue of opening direct air links between Dubai and St. Petersburg was considered. Sheikh Ahmed called the future St. Petersburg direction of the airline "priority" and called for the opening of a direct flight between the two cities next year "in the interests of developing business ties and tourism." Valentina Matvienko emphasized that "a delegation from Dubai was invited to participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, and showed great interest in this meeting." According to her, “many leading businessmen of the emirate and the head of the emirate’s parliament intend to visit the forum.”
The St. Petersburg governor is confident that "after visiting Dubai, relations between St. Petersburg and the UAE will receive a new impetus and will actively develop, especially in the areas of tourism, investment, port construction and real estate." She emphasized the "fruitfulness" of the visit. What the St. Petersburg guest did not have time to tell our magazine because of the desire to see, learn and discuss in Dubai as much as possible, she told reporters in her hometown on the Neva. Here, it became known from her that developers from the salty Emirate coast of the Persian Gulf will come to the coast of a practically fresh-water Gulf of Finland. They will build up the City business zone on Vasilyevsky Island in the Neva Delta. The largest construction company Dubai World, according to Matvienko, is interested in the possibility of integrated development of the island. The size of the investment has not yet been determined.
Emirates are acquainted with all major projects of St. Petersburg and are especially interested in the integrated development of the new territory of the Marine Facade of the city. Valentina Matvienko highly appreciates "Dubai World’s experience in exploring new spaces." She notes with satisfaction that the company is "building from scratch, quickly, creating all the necessary infrastructure." The governor welcomes the arrival of Arab developers on the St. Petersburg wetland. In her opinion, the "extremely high-rise architecture" of the Arab Emirates is not suitable for the city on the Neva, but the Dubai pace of development may well be adopted by St. Petersburg builders.
Emirate specialists are already studying legal documentation, which in itself indicates serious intentions. It is too early to speak about the volume of future transactions, but they may amount to billions of dollars, since we are talking about the development of an area of 75 hectares on which about 840 thousand square meters will be built. meters of residential and office space. Construction on the island should be completed in 2015. Artificial canals will separate the island land from the main territory, and only two pedestrian and two automobile bridges can enter the City.
Dubai builders are also interested in residential development in other areas of the alluvium. There will be no particularly tall buildings on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Altitude is limited by the construction of 40-story buildings that rise to the sky by about 120 meters in order to ensure the safety of aviation flights. Dubai World is expected to bring its subsidiaries to the northern capital, in particular for the construction of the Bronka-Lomonosov container terminal. But here, the Dubai people have competitors, and they will have to fight in an open competition for the right to participate in construction. It’s not easy to conquer Peter, and it’s even more difficult to add magnificence to his strict, classic beauty, refreshed by Neva breathing.
