In the next five years, thirty real estate projects near the water will appear in St. Petersburg. Territories with such potential are located on Petrovsky Island, Leontyevsky Cape, along the Bolshaya, Srednyaya and Malaya Nevka rivers, the Korabelny and Petrovsky canals.

View of the water from the windows is a big advantage of urban housing
Photo: Evgeny Pavlenko, Kommersant / buy photo

Simultaneously with the implementation of housing projects, new embankments may appear in the city. The drivers of their creation will be the developers themselves, this is the conclusion reached by the participants of the round table “Residential Real Estate in St. Petersburg: View from the Water.”

As noted by Ekaterina Nemchenko, director of the residential real estate department at Knight Frank St. Petersburg, the main development of land plots near the water, including redevelopment, will take place in the Petrogradsky, Vasileostrovsky, Primorsky and Central districts.

“An analysis of projects announced for implementation before 2020, currently in various stages of development, including new phases of existing projects, showed that in the next five years about 1.2 million will appear in St. Petersburg in the immediate vicinity of rivers and canals. sq. m of housing near the water. Of these, nine projects are declared as luxury housing, 19 business class projects and two economy class projects,” added Ekaterina Nemchenko.

According to her, St. Petersburg has the potential to create embankments themselves. Their obvious lack in the city is compensated by individual developers in their projects.

According to Evgenia Kolesova, head of the department of economic analysis and research at the Urbanika Institute of Territorial Planning, these will be fundamentally new embankments for St. Petersburg. Unlike the usual granite-paved streets that do not provide access to the water, developers, following the demand of society and buyers, will increasingly create public spaces on the embankments. “European cities have been following this path for a long time, in which, like in St. Petersburg, the process of redevelopment of industrial enterprises located on the banks is actively underway. However, unlike European and some Russian cities, so far only developers have taken steps to develop public spaces on the embankments , and the city authorities are not showing initiative,” says Ms. Kolesova.

One of the first new city embankments should be a space on the Petrogradskaya side as part of the elite residential complex Leontievsky Mys, said Igor Onokov, general director of the development company of the same name. The length of the new embankment will be more than 600 meters, and it will be accessible to all citizens. “This will help create a point of attraction similar to the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. In any case, this is what we are counting on,” he says. “Now we are formalizing all the legal nuances of landscaping the embankment, after which we will begin its design according to the design project of Philippe Starck’s studio YOO Inspired by Starck, who, in addition to the interior design of the apartments, also designed public spaces for the project."

Konstantin Kovalev, First Deputy General Director of the Pioneer Group of Companies, St. Petersburg direction, clarified that when creating public spaces near the water, it is necessary to think through the maximum possible functionality for them.

“When developing the concept of an embankment with a length of more than one and a half kilometers as part of the Life-Primorsky project, we thought about saturating it with infrastructure facilities in order to avoid spontaneous development of the territory. The Primorsky promenade is intended to return people to an open and comfortable coastal environment that can support the desire of citizens for various forms of activity Thus, we plan to create a functional and sought-after coastal space of a new type,” said Konstantin Kovalev.

Today, St. Petersburg ranks one of the first places in the world in terms of the number and volume of reservoirs and waterways on its territory. According to the latest data, within its boundaries there are 93 rivers (including branches, channels and canals) with a total length of about 300 km and about 100 reservoirs (lakes, artificial and natural ponds). The total length of all embankments today is 300 kilometers.

Valery Gribanov

Developers are drawn to the water