The previous developer cannot fulfill its obligations / Evgeny Egorov / Vedomosti

OOO RR-city, with which the Leningrad Region administration reached an agreement at the beginning of the year to buy out the Forces of Nature project from the developer O2 Development and complete the buildings, on Monday notified that it was refusing the deal and withdrawing from the project, the administration reported yesterday.

The commissioning of four buildings of the Sily Prirody residential complex in Murino was planned for July 2019. However, it was not possible to agree with banks on financing the project for 800 million rubles. "We do not have enough of our own working capital to implement the project, so we decided to suspend its implementation," said a source close to RR-City. According to his estimate, a total of 2.3 billion rubles are required to complete the project, and it was supposed to be financed, among other things, by selling apartments. The developer's representative declined to give official comments.

The construction of the residential complex "Forces of Nature" has been carried out since 2013 by the housing cooperative "Murinskoye-1" and OOO "Romantika", which are part of the O2 Development group; they bought 8 hectares from Baltinvestbank for construction. The completion was planned for the end of 2017, but in the spring of 2016, construction was stopped due to lack of financing. According to the Leningrad Region Administration, 2,666 share contribution agreements and 185 equity participation agreements have been concluded. At the beginning of the year, the developer reported that "Forces of Nature" has 3,500 apartments and about 2,600 equity holders. The Leningrad Region Administration promised the investor who enters the project to complete the construction the opportunity to build on an adjacent land plot of 24 hectares owned by Baltinvestbank, says a source close to "RR-city". "We were going to buy this plot, solve the problem of finishing the construction and earn something on it," he adds. According to him, the bank set the price at 4 billion rubles. "The bank continues to consider options for developing this territory; at the moment, there have been no official applications for the plot from the company "RR-city"," the press service of Baltinvestbank (which came under the control of the sanatorium - "Absolut Bank") reported.

Together with RR-city, issues of development of the adjacent area were resolved, a full audit of the site was conducted, a scheme for connecting houses to the networks was created, lists Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad Region Government Mikhail Moskvin. "It's a pity that now we will have to start everything from the very beginning," the press service quotes him as saying.

Register for the chosen ones

815 people were included in the register of affected participants in shared construction in the Leningrad Region as of the beginning of June 2017, the regional administration reported. In the Leningrad Region, there are 17 apartment buildings that are being built with serious violations of the originally established deadlines

Initially, Baltinvestbank was going to finance the project, but in June it abandoned its plans. "The bank set excessive collateral requirements," explained Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko last week. The bank does not have the right to issue an unsecured loan; this is a normal requirement, says a source close to the negotiations. A source close to RR-City calls this "a big surprise."

The Leningrad Region Administration held talks on allocating a loan to complete the problematic residential complex with three commercial banks. According to a source close to the talks, the banks involved were Rossiya Bank, Sberbank, and Bank Saint Petersburg. "The banks did not agree to spend money on the project due to high reputational risks. We received the last refusal on Saturday," Moskvin reported through the press service. At the same time, shareholders of the Sily Prirody residential complex held a protest action by blocking Toksovskoye Highway. The press services of Bank Saint Petersburg and North-West Sberbank denied the fact of the talks. The press service of JSCB Rossiya did not respond to Vedomosti's request.

There is a negative background around the project, notes a source close to RR-city. According to him, a representative of Bank Rossiya, with whom they discussed participation in the project, is afraid of the equity holders' protests. According to him, the equity holders are planning unauthorized settlement in the unfinished building. "There are already risks in working on this long-term construction project - what if sales don't go well, the price is wrong, the deadlines are shifted. And the investor is constantly under pressure from people who have legal demands," complains the interlocutor of Vedomosti. He admits the possibility of RR-city returning to the project if a way out of the situation appears.

Investor leaves Forces of Nature