Money-Growing: Dinner at the Top

Top floor restaurants have always been very popular, their patrons even willing to pay extra for a panoramic view, says Maksim Privezentsev, executive director of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers. Russian gourmets are no exception.

For example, prices at Krasny Bar (Red Bar), situated on the 27th floor of Tower-2000 in the Moscow City business center, are the same as in other city restaurants, yet to get in there you have to book a table a week in advance, he says.

Restaurateur Yelena Vassilyeva, director of the Citi-Menedzhment management company, studied view-from-the-top restaurants for the purpose of launching a similar project of her own in the Russian capital. Top-floor, or ‘view’ restaurants can be divided into several categories, she says.

The first category includes tourist attractions, situated in world-famous architectural landmarks. These include the Toronto television tower in Canada (553 m) and the Ostankino Tower in Moscow (540 m), the Eiffel Tower in Paris (320 m), or famous skyscrapers, such as the Empire State Building (443 m).

At times, nature itself helps architects in building a restaurant for tourists. For example, the authorities in Bolivia have announced the construction of the highest restaurant in the world. It will be situated in a tower, which, although ‘only’ 100 meters high, will be erected on a mountain slope at an altitude of 4,100 meters above sea level. The initiators of the project promise that the restaurant will offer a breathtaking view of Lake Titikaka and the peaks of the Andes.

“All in all, this has to be a place a tourist will consider a visit,” Vassilyeva concludes. Indeed, such restaurants are tourist attractions, and that is why cuisine is not the priority. For the most part such restaurants are not expensive; their format may even be that of a fast-food joint. But in most cases such places offer their guests various forms of service, say, a set of inexpensive dishes in one hall and full restaurant service in another.

Sedmoye Nebo (Seventh Heaven) – once Europe’s highest restaurant – occupied three stories of the Ostankino Tower at heights of 328m, 331m and 334m. Revolving round floors enabled visitors to enjoy the full view of the capital. During its 36 years of operation 10 million people visited the restaurant.

The restaurant was closed in the wake of the fire that hit the television tower in August 2000. Next year, however, it will re-open after new high-speed lifts are installed in the tower, a source in the state-owned Russian television and broadcasting network that operates the building told Vedomosti.

Meanwhile, the project of the renovated restaurant is being discussed. The authorities are considering leasing it to a restaurant company. “I think, major restaurateurs will fight bitterly for that restaurant as it is, undoubtedly, a very interesting site,” says Privezentsev.

The second category of ‘high-rise public catering facilities’ includes business class restaurants, Vassilyeva continues. They occupy office buildings or multi-storied hotels. Privezentsev notes that such restaurants often cater for tenants of the office building and hotel guests as well as visitors attending business meetings. Such restaurants are never cheap.

Opening a Restaurant with a View

There are certain rules restaurateurs must abide by, says Vassilyeva. “In the case of high-rise restaurants what matters most is the organization of space. As soon as you move two meters away from the window all the sense of visiting such a place is gone.”

That is why view restaurants are often built in the form of a podium, with the tables closest to the window being placed on the lowest level while tables farther from the window are placed at a slightly higher level, and so on. Prices may vary depending on the proximity of tables to the windows.

A circular room is the most convenient option for a restaurant with a view, says an employee of the Panorama restaurant, occupying the 22nd and 23rd floors of the Zolotoye Koltso (Golden Ring) Hotel. In such rooms visitors are offered a panoramic view at virtually all the tables.

As a rule, such restaurants are situated in office buildings or top-class hotels and cater mainly for the participants of business meetings. “Such locations offer an opportunity to hold a business meeting in a very beautiful, neutrally designed setting, void of any kitsch. The city outside the window is what it is and if someone doesn’t like it, he should go and live somewhere else,” Vassilyeva says. Such places are also patronized by “couples”.

Moreover, high-rise business class restaurants are a great venue for corporate events in large companies where not all the employees know each other. That is why the layout of the restaurant should provide an opportunity of transforming the dining hall into an open space suitable for holding a cocktail party, so that people can move around the hall, socialize and feast their eyes on the view.

Admittedly, business class restaurants are only found in high-class buildings. A source in a major development company told Vedomosti that the Peking Hotel hires out two halls on its top floors to the organizers of corporate events and receptions.

However, this project is doomed to fail, believes our interlocutor. Even though the premises in question are situated in a spectacular Stalin-era high-rise in the center of the city, the lobby of the hotel and its elevators badly need renovating. “VIPs are hardly likely to be satisfied – even if everything is fine on the 20th, 30th floor – if the lower floors are nothing but a living memory of the good old Soviet times.”

Vassilyeva notes that high-rise restaurants are called such because of their location. For instance, in the Zamoskvorechye district any restaurant situated above the third or fourth floor offers a good view. For customers to enjoy the scenery the restaurant must offer a view not of cars and crowds but of sky and roofs. Extreme heights may harm the project, claims Vassilyeva. Sedmoye Nebo, for example, is situated too high for its guests to have a good view of the city even in good weather, she says.

A number of projects to build restaurants with a view in Moscow were never implemented, says Privezentsev. There were plans to open a restaurant on the roof of a skyscraper in Taganskaya Square. “But the residents of the block staunchly defended their building,” Privezentsev says.

And because catering establishments in residential buildings are subject to extremely tough restrictions from various controlling bodies, the task proved unfeasible. Six years ago there was another very interesting proposal to build a restaurant on the roof of the Lenin Library.

“I think this project was never implemented out of ideological considerations – someone was opposed to public catering in that shrine of culture,” says the expert. Several years ago he consulted a company that planned to build a panoramic view restaurant on the viewing platform of the capital’s Sparrow Hills. “But this project was rejected because it failed the environmental test,” Privezentsev says.

“One cannot say that demand for properties with a view is high. Such requests are quite rare,” says Alyona Rebarbar, head of the commercial real estate department with Penny Lane Realty.

According to Rebarbar, the main reason for that is the scarcity of supply. There are no vacant premises; the law bans such restaurants from opening in residential buildings, while attics in old administrative buildings, for the most part, fail to meet the necessary requirements.

Besides, it is hardly profitable to rent properties on the upper floors of buildings in Ostozhenka [Street] or in Zamoskvorechye for the purpose of opening a restaurant because rental charges run up to $3,000 to $4,000 per square meter per year; with such rates no restaurant project would ever pay off, holds Privezentsev.

Opening a restaurant on upper floors or in garrets, especially in the city center, where most buildings are old, is very expensive, says Alyona Rebarbar. “It is necessary to install plumbing, a ventilation system, sometimes additional electric wiring, a lift – customers will hardly be tempted to ascend on foot,” she says. “In some cases even the roof needs reconstructing. Glazing panoramic windows requires special light filters and illumination, to brighten up the room in bad weather. The list goes on.”

Experts are hardly optimistic about the prospects of low-cost open-air restaurants on roofs and terraces. The summer in Moscow is too short and building an open-air eating joint for just a few months is unlikely to prove profitable, explains Vladislav Stroganov of Safari.

Furthermore, opening a high-rise restaurant requires additional expenses for advertising and marketing, says Rebarbar, because persuading a customer to climb up onto the roof of an ordinary house is not an easy task and requires special effort. “People have got used to first-floor restaurants and it is hard to say whether they will be willing to ascend six floors, unless the view from there is truly breathtaking,” says Privezentsev.

Ever Higher

However, the situation is likely to change in some three or four years. In line with plans endorsed by the city administration, the construction of high-rise buildings will increase within the next decade. All such projects include the building of panoramic view restaurants. The only exceptions are residential high-rises.

Maksim Privezentsev, who combines the post of the head of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers with his work as the head of the maintenance service with the Stroimontazh construction company, says that Stroimontazh plans to build high-rise restaurants in the Federatsia estate, currently under construction on the territory of the Moskva Citi (Moscow City) business center. “Such plans are quite natural, for one of the towers on that estate – 365 meters high – will be the tallest building in Moscow,” he says.

Four upper floors in both towers of the complex – 57 and 87 floors high, respectively – will be occupied by restaurants and viewing platforms. Restaurants are also due to open in other ‘skyscrapers’ in Moskva Citi: the Gorod Stolits project of Kapital Group, a skyscraper erected by Tekhinvest and the Northern Tower of Severstaltrans. Construction of all those buildings is to be completed by late 2007. Experts admit, however, that rental charges for high-rise restaurants will be higher than for catering establishments on the ground floors.

A poll conducted among Moscow restaurateurs has revealed that there are barely more than a dozen high-rise restaurants in the city. Those are, in addition to Red Bar and Panorama, the Konservatoria (Conservatoire) bar on the 10th floor of Ararat Park Hotel, Safari on the 16th floor of Sputnik Hotel, Loft Restaurant on the 6th floor of the Nautilus shopping mall, Snob’s on the upper floor of the top class residential estate on Ostozehnka. All those restaurants are quite expensive – to dine there costs $40 to $70 on average, drinks excluded.