View From Within: The New Moskva

They say that Stalin signed both – he was never one to understand architectural nuances. For obvious reasons nobody asked him again to choose. When the papers were brought Shchusevsky, the academician was not become puzzled, but united the two projects into one. So in 1938 in Moscow there was a hotel that had two sides of its facade different from each other. The hotel stood through the war and pretty much survived the revolution in the 1990s. But the authorities decided to smash it, sorry, reconstruct it, this century. The motivation was that the Moskva had become outdated, and that some its bu7ildings had deteriorated by almost 50 per cent.

Reconstruction or Restoration

Reconstruction of the Moskva hotel has allowed for the area of the complex to almost double in size. The total area of the new premises will exceed 185,500 sq.m compared with 97,000 sq.m with the former building. The share of the hotel component will now measure 57,000 sq.m (210 rooms), an apartment-hotel will occupy almost 25,000 sq.m (235 apartments), and a congress center with 1,000 seats will take up more than 24,000 sq.m. 17,820 sq.m has been allocated for a shopping complex, 10,730 sq.m of which will be occupied by an anchor and 2,260 sq.m for restaurants and cafes. Real Estate Management will operate the retail zone. There will also be a 47,940-sq.m car park with 739 parking places.

The developer of the premises is Dekmos, the contractor is Strabag AG, and the general contractor is M. B. Posokhina’s Mosproject-2 (Workshop No. 7).

In the hotel there will be 27 types of rooms. Currently designers under the direction of Four Seasons are developing their lay-out, says assistant general director of Dekmos Boris Yevseyev. He notes that it will be far from complete this year.

It is planned that the hotel will be put into operation in the second half of 2009 rather than before the end of 2008 as promised. Four Seasons will be the hotel’s operator. "Delays in putting the premises into operation are connected with the fact that initially the company did not plan to carry out the engineering reconstruction of the underground zone independently," Yevseyev informs. But the Moscow government (the owner of Moskva) has stated that it does not have the money for reconstruction although it has allocated several millions dollars for the development of a Feasibility Report on the reorganization of the premises.

The decision to demolish the Moskva hotel was accompanied by promises by the authorities to return the original idea of the façade to the building and make the interior modern and functional. The new project was discussed for a rather long time. An enactment by the Moscow government was signed in 2003, and the developer came to the site in 2005. It was decided to restore the hotel to the dimensions in which it was constructed last century. Restorations of historical buildings that have taken place in Moscow have tended to be reconstructions. According to Dmitry Narinsky, head of design bureau Adec, "reconstruction unlike restoration is more arbitrary." In other words, the constructer is not obliged to regenerate the historically developed shape and interior of a building, but may keep its image. "With reconstruction something is lost," Narinsky sadly notices.

From the side of Okhotny Ryad and Manezhnaya Ploshchad Shchusev’s façade has been copied without changes. But the façade facing Teatralnaya Ploshchad has been changed, "so that the square looks complete and finished," says Vladimir Kolosnitsin, head architectural design workshop No. 7 Mosproekt-2. "Now the facade of the Moskva is similar in style to the Metropol hotel, and from Ploshchad Revolyutsii the hotel will be reminiscent of Grand Hotel. All height parameters have been kept," he adds.

The designers did not plan to copy the rooms from the old hotel, but measures have been taken to preserve valuable elements of the interiors. "According to the contract with Moskomhaslediye, valuable white and pink marble, dismantled from the old building will be used," Yevseyev explains. The list of retro-elements which will be used in the building may be expanded with exhibits from the Shchusevsky Museum of Architecture. "It has already been decided that old lampshades on which views of historical architectural monuments of Moscow are embodied will be used,” says Kolosnitsin.

For SHCA architect Alexander Nikulshin, the decision of town-planners to reconstruct the hotel has brought up a big question: "Why was the building put on the list of monuments of architecture, for this decision to then be spat at, and the building be demolished?" According to him, The Moskva hotel is a continuous historical joke. "The huge construction of the Moskva has destroyed the historical ensemble of Manezhnaya Ploshchad and Teatralnaya Ploshchad all over again. Then when the building was almost complete they decided in strongly pronounced constructivist, "to hang" classicist decor. Together with the asymmetric façade the joke has been added to with the decision to bring unnecessary strokes of modern to the finishing," sneers Nikulshin.

"It is unequivocally possible to talk about the preservation of museum objects only. Buildings that have a commercial purpose should correspond to functional demands,” says Narinsky. “Premises should have a life, it is impossible for all buildings to remain unchanged. To restore the hotel protogenically is difficult as it doesn’t meet modern requirements anymore."

According to Nikulshin, from a historical point of view it would be more correct from a historical point of view to leave the territory not built up, restoring part of the ensemble of the central Moscow squares. "Having decided to build anew, it would be more logical to create a building that competes with modern European-level architecture or to follow the drawings of Shchusev, instead of diffidently coming up with ideas and compiling facades and stylizing for the 100th time," he says. Narinsky notes that in Moscow a program should be developed, which would stipulate what to do with historical buildings, and for what purposes they should be used. "The most primitive way is for them to become museums, for the preservation of objects." But such use would hardly be rational. Now there are not enough examples of the successful coexistence of modern life and the historical past. "All of them are connected with temple monuments because the function of the building in this case is kept,” the architect considers.

Competitors are not scared

The new hotel will have to compete with some unspoilt neighbours: located not far away on Tverskaya is the Sheraton and two Marriott hotels: the Ritz Carlton and the Ararat Park Hyatt, are also nearby. The old, as well as the new Moskva, will correspond to premium class. A well-known developer says: " you go to the center, there are no places to park your car, and 5-star hotels are one on top of each other." But advisers still sing the old song about a deficit of hotel rooms.

"Many want to stay in prestigious hotels with world standards, but in Moscow this is not always possible," says Elena Ristavaara, director of consulting at Colliers International. "Everyone has known and spoken about the fact that Moscow does not have enough hotels for more than just one year. Although in view of the projects announced it is possible to predict that in the next few years the top segment will come close to the point of saturation," she continues. Expenditures on the construction of 4-star hotels do not differ too much from investments in 5-star hotels, the difference is defined by the interiors of the building. Any hotel traditionally takes a long time to make returns, therefore the investor usually includes it within the structure of a multifunctional complex. Developers haven’t really aspired to build "pure" hotels in Russia. "The high cost of land, charges, the high cost of connection to the city’s networks, the subsequent difficulties with operation – all point investors to choose a different type of real estate," says Ristavaara.

The success of the Moskva hotel will be because of its location in the city centre, ideally suited for a 5-star hotel, and choice of hotel operator, says Andrei Zakrevsky, senior vice president of Knight Frank Russia, with optimism. According to him, "the Four Seasons has constant clients outside Russia. Those who travel the world a lot and are loyal to this brand will use its services in Moscow." "The high class of the hotel allows to appoint higher prices for rooms, and hence, make returns on investments more quickly,” adds Ristavaara, agreeing that "the future Four Seasons hotel has a “top” location." Marina Usenko, executive vice president at JLL, says that, as a rule, the cost of a room in a Four Seasons anywhere in the world is approximately 20 per cent higher than the average price of the nearest competitors, even when these prices are also high.

In Zakrevsky’s opinion, the hotel will avoid the risk of staying empty and competitors like Ritz Carlton and Ararat Park Hyatt are not scared of it. "They will have a unique niche,” agrees Usenko. “The brand of the hotel is well known throughout the world, and they never reduce their price, stating: we cost how much we are worth. We will not price dump to increase numbers."