19 June 2013
SRV, the Finnish project management contractor, has teamed up with real estate company Russia Invest to build a shopping centre in the heart of St. Petersburg, Russia.
Okhta Mall will cost around $335m, three-fifths of which will be provided by a Russian bank, with SRV and Russia Invest investing around $63m each.
The 144,000-sq-m shopping centre is part of a much bigger project called Septem City which will cover 8.5ha and comprise of business, commercial and leisure services.
Okhta Mall would be only a short distance from St. Isaac’s Square (Credit: Sergey Galchenkov/Wikimedia)
Veli-Matti Kullas, SRV’s vice president, project development in Russia, said there was plenty of room in the market for new, well-planned projects, adding: "The Russian retail market has grown strongly in recent years and in the St. Petersburg area alone retail trade volume is around $27bn, which corresponds to around three-quarters of the entire volume of the Finnish retail trade."
The centre is due to start construction late autumn and will open in spring 2016.
Source: Wall Street Journal
