The capital of Orthodoxy for 140 billion: an Orthodox Vatican will be built in Sergiev Posad

A real Orthodox Vatican may appear in Sergiev Posad, writes Vedomosti - Strelka Design Bureau, commissioned by Dom.RF, a VEB company, has developed a plan for transforming the city worth at least 140 billion rubles. This is almost three times more than the state spent on the entire program of improvement of Russian cities in two years.

• “The idea of ​​recreating and developing the historical part of Sergiev Posad as a spiritual, cultural and tourist center” was first discussed at the end of 2017, by April 2018 the concept was ready, and the Russian Orthodox Church turned to Vladimir Putin with a request to consider and support the concept of turning the city into the capital Orthodoxy, sources in the government and the Russian Orthodox Church told Vedomosti. The concept has not yet appeared in the public domain. Vedomosti got acquainted with the document.
• The project involves the restructuring of the city center and dividing it into spiritual and administrative parts, but without opposing one part to the other (the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca are given as an example in the concept). The transformations, according to the current mayor Mikhail Tokarev, will affect the city center with an area of ​​approximately 400 hectares (the entire city occupies about 1200 hectares).
• All 23 state institutions of the city will be relocated to a new administrative and business center. In place of their old buildings, around the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, a cultural and representative center will be built with a museum of Orthodox art, a youth Orthodox cultural center, a theological library, a congress center and a patriarchal reception house, a hotel, a higher church court and other church administrative buildings.
• The plans include the construction of 800,000 sq. m of new housing, 31 district and local centers with consumer and social infrastructure, construction of a new bypass through the city and a transport hub, as well as a new airport on the site of the old Vikhrevo airfield, which will be able to receive business jets.
• The head of the Church Council for Art, Architecture and Restoration, Archpriest Leonid Kalinin, explains the reconstruction by the need to “gradually unload the monastery” and “occupy tourists so that they spend less time directly in the monastery, because it is very difficult for monks to live in such a noisy place.” In 2018, Sergiev Posad was visited by about 2 million tourists.
• Mayor of Sergiev Posad Mikhail Tokarev estimates the implementation of the entire concept at 120-140 billion rubles, 90% of the money, according to him, will come from the federal budget, 10% from the Moscow region. The participation of state companies and businesses in the project is out of the question, although the Board of Trustees of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra includes the heads of Rostec, Russian Railways, Sberbank, Gazprombank and billionaires Andrei Bokarev, Viktor Vekselberg, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Vasily Anisimov, Suleiman Kerimov and others.
• The experts interviewed by Vedomosti rather like the project, although they speak with caution about its implementation. Economist Natalya Zubarevich notes that 140 billion rubles is almost a quarter of the entire consolidated budget of the Moscow Region. “I think they [the authors of the project] rely on the piety of high officials,” says Natalya Zubarevich, a professor at Moscow State University and a specialist in regional economics. - There is a rational grain in this. But the Moscow region has a lot of other unresolved issues: roads, a garbage problem, a shortage of kindergartens and schools.”