Reconstruction instead of demolition: will Muscovites be allowed to decide the fate of their Khrushchev-era apartments

Lyudmila Butuzova

“It took a long time to make the foundation, and finally we got down to the aboveground part. Soon the floor will be visible in the attached rooms on the first floor. The builders promise one floor for 3 weeks”, - says Olga Glagoleva, a resident of Koptevo, head of the municipal assembly of deputies and concurrently a member of the building complex “Boulevard of Matros Zheleznyak”, on Facebook.

After the defeat of the company "Reconstruction of Five-Storey Buildings", which provides methodological assistance to owners wishing to modernize their houses on their own, this process in Moscow stalled, no real alternative to the Khrushchevs that fell under the demolition was seen. However, no! The initiative from below has broken through and found support from above.

Reconstruction of a five-story building on Zheleznyak ("inside and out", with a superstructure and outbuilding, with new communications, an elevator and landscaping) will cost 611 million rubles according to the estimate. The area of the house is now 1897 sq. m. After reconstruction, it will increase to 8 thousand 740 sq. m. m, and the height is up to 12 floors. There is also one underground floor. The layouts on the upper floors are as follows: odnushka 59.5 sq. m, kopeck piece - 72.3 sq. m, three rubles - from 75.4 sq. m up to 150 (in two levels). The area of apartments in the old part of the building will also grow. New walls will be placed around the five-story building at a distance of 2 to 2.5 meters from the previous frame, due to this, apartment owners will receive an additional and free of charge from 17 to 40 square meters. Many would like the same patience bonus for themselves.

There seems to be no budget money for remodeling the house, there is no investor either, the construction project is completely dependent on the buyers of future apartments. How many of them now is not advertised, but judging by the fact that in social networks and on its website the housing cooperative actively encourages neighbors to become shareholders, there are not many buyers yet. I remember that even on Mishin, 32, the reconstruction had to be delayed for a year due to a shortage of people who wanted to buy an overbuilt apartment. own savings.

The management of the ZhSK hopes that Sailor Zheleznyak will not have to make these sacrifices. The house has a good location - on the territory of "old Moscow" in a historical area with developed infrastructure. Near Timiryazevsky forest park, a large pond with a beach, within walking distance of the Voykovskaya metro station. What else do you need to solve your housing problems and live in a familiar comfortable environment?

Now the main question is: the reconstruction in Koptevo is a one-time action or, after all, the urban planning policy of the capital begins to unfold to face the people, and they themselves can decide whether to demolish their old five-story building or make a new house out of it. Who knows? Well, of course, the head of the Department of Urban Development Policy of the city Levkin Sergey Ivanovich. But I'll call him as an old acquaintance. There was a case in 2014, I interviewed him right in front of a house under construction on the street. Mishin, 32. I was not the only one there, about twenty people from the media, opening their mouths, listened that the mayor's office was so inspired by the experience of the pioneers that it selected, examined and recommended another 490 Khrushchevs for reconstruction "like Mishin".

But do not believe it, there was such a chance! The honeymoon between the reconstruction and the Sobyanin government lasted for 5 years. And you won't believe the second time! - Marat Khusnullin himself and no less important person in the mayor's office, Sergei Levkin, saw great economic feasibility in the reconstruction of housing without attracting public funds and directly showed their interest in this type of private urban planning activity.

But here, as they say, the stars have successfully converged. Since 2011, the state program "Housing" has begun to operate in the country (and it has not yet been canceled), with a separate item on the reconstruction of the housing stock by the owners. It turned out that Moscow has its own program, "Renovation of Unbearable Housing Stock", and house 32 on Mishin Street fits perfectly into it. This, according to the recollections of the chairman of the housing cooperative Garry Kuznetsov, was announced by the Moscow authorities, who visited the pioneers of private urban planning.

“They called our housing cooperative an example to follow, which can be followed by the owners of apartments in a thousand houses throughout the capital,” says Garry Ivanovich. - Moreover, they not only praised, but also imbued with the spirit of our project, reworked it for the city. We made a city order for the development of guidelines so that each owner could take this detailed instruction and use it to reconstruct the house in the same way.

Methodological recommendations were developed on the direct instructions of the head of DepGradPolitiki Sergei Lyovkin. In 2013, his department counted 1 million square meters of living space in Moscow, which meet all the specified criteria and were recommended for reconstruction with a superstructure. Competitions for the best projects were held, a catalog of works was compiled - even now, take any and bring it to life. The photo album of projects was recently available on the website dgp.mos.ru in the section "Integrated development of Moscow".

Two years later, at the Moscow exhibition "DOMEXPO" Levkin said that the total area of buildings to be reconstructed is already 30 million square meters. When asked by the “NI” correspondent what steps are being taken in this direction, he said that “everything is going on as usual, the options are being worked out.” Actually, it was suspicious that at that time the department was “working out” the reconstruction of only five houses - on Matros Zheleznyak boulevard, 11, on Izmailovsky Avenue, 22, box. 1, Nagornaya street, house 23, building 1, Senezhskaya, house 5 and Petrovsko-Razumovskiy proezd, 18 "A". The remaining "30 million square meters" lay motionless, or rather, they were waiting for the demolition, which was not far off.

Something went wrong? Why did they push their heads against renovation and reconstruction, if in the original sense they mean the same thing - renovation, modernization of outdated housing?

- It didn't go so well when officials seized a monopoly on Moscow and began to do whatever came into their heads: abolish laws, codes, SNIPs, demolish and build wherever and what they want. At the same time, people's needs for high-quality and comfortable housing is an empty phrase. Only money: set up more and sell at a higher price, - said to "NI" the architect Alexei Krotov, a consistent fighter for reconstruction and one of the first in Moscow who managed to turn a rotten five-story building on Khimki Boulevard into a comfortable modern house. - The reconstruction has other tasks. Yuri Luzhkov, for all his contradictions, understood this. When we made our house, he was sincerely glad that an alternative solution to demolition had been found. Then, in hot pursuit, the design institutes were instructed to think, look for a solution. But the desire of the mayor is one thing, and the almighty construction complex, headed by the existing construction lobby, is quite another.

This lobby, hated by Muscovites, pushed through the law on renovation, presenting it exclusively as a carpet bombing of five-story buildings in the interests of large developers. But once they themselves did not shy away from reconstruction. I must say that the idea of building on existing houses is not new - a corresponding experiment was carried out back in the early 2000s. In particular, on Marshal Zhukov Avenue, one of the five-story buildings was turned into a seven-story building. The house was completely renovated with the replacement of plumbing and utilities, as well as equipped with an elevator and a garbage chute. The reconstruction was carried out by the Krost concern. But even then the developer said that the superstructure without resettlement was too complicated for both the company and the residents. And when there is an opportunity to demolish the house and relocate people to other housing, it is better not to engage in reconstruction. And the profitability of such projects for investors is low.

For some reason, in Europe, which for Moscow remains an example to follow, profitability is not the main thing. Let's see how they do it in Germany. "German Khrushchev" won the renowned architect Stefan Forster (Stefan Forster Architekten) within Regeneration East project (can be translated as "Eastern Revival"). He has worked in two small towns Leinefelde and Halle, and showed that the older five-story building in dying regions can When she was in Halle and lived for several days in a house that had just been modernized by Stefan Forster, the correspondent of NI managed to meet with the architect.

“Decent housing, you say? So this is it! It is enough just to renovate the house well. No need to spend money on demolition, no need to look for a convenient developer who will build up a long-established area with giant high-rise buildings, forever ruining the infrastructure and disrupting the population balance ... Over the current 20-30-50-story monsters, which are now being massively built in Moscow, no reconstruction it will be impossible to conduct. Someday they will be called an urban planning mistake, but they can only be demolished".

For two years, the city activist Anna Zubarevich went to a picket at the mayor's office, demanding to stop the construction of high-rise buildings in Kuzminki and switch to the reconstruction of Khrushchev buildings, which formed the basis of the housing stock in the area. She collected 5,000 signatures in support of her initiative, and was detained four times for 3-5 days as a threat to public order. Upon leaving, Zubarevich wrote the same post on social networks:

“I am not the danger. Dangerous for the Moscow administration is the very initiative of the townspeople to put their own homes in order without attracting budget funds. No matter how they try to retouch it, people perfectly understand the true reasons. Now allow one, a hundred will want the same reconstruction. The renovation plan will be thwarted... Who will allow this? "

Kuzminki, by the way, has been built up - Mama, do not worry! Almost half of the 490 houses that were once identified and surveyed by the mayor's office for renovation were from the area. Does anyone remember this now?

Nevertheless, it was believed that the Moscow government did not abandon the idea of an alternative approach to renovation with the participation of residents. Five houses wandered for several years from report to report: "We created a housing cooperative, held a meeting, the permitting documents are being collected, reconstruction will begin in the third quarter of the year n ..." Then, out of the five "sponsored" houses, only two remained - on Matros Zheleznyak and Izmailovsky Proezd. The rest unexpectedly found out that the territory was either “crowded” (and there were no two meters near the house to make the arrangement), or “there was no road network” (how did they, poor fellows, live without roads for 50-60 years?). Then Izmailovsky Proezd was baked, unable to bear the gimmick. It was not clear what happened to Sailor Zheleznyak, he seemed to be reconstructed, but like a corpse in a morgue.

In the meantime, the initiative for reconstruction was developing from below. Residents of ten, then fifteen, twenty five-story buildings wanted to improve their living conditions on their own, but in DepGradPolitiki they were no longer waiting for them, and they had nowhere to go, except for the very firm "City reconstruction of five-story buildings." At the request of the owners, she provided them with information and methodological support, that is, in fact, she taught an educational program - where to start creating a housing cooperative, how to hold a meeting of tenants, which reconstruction project to choose for your house, what documents to collect for approval by the authorities and, in the end how to avoid mistakes so that a new business does not turn out to be bitter and unnecessary.

Around the firm were grouped 27 registered housing cooperatives and more than a hundred initiative groups of Muscovites who consider the modernization of their houses as the only alternative to demolition. The architectural workshop of Alexei Krotov has prepared about two dozen projects for the reconstruction of five-story buildings - not only for the GRP company, but also for other Russian cities. Interest in the reconstruction program is shown in Irkutsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Samara, in small towns around Chelyabinsk. In Moscow, despite the fact that the initiative of the townspeople was supported by the then Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, the Public Chamber, the Popular Front, the Union of Moscow Builders, the community of architects, State Duma deputies, the chambers of commerce and industry of Moscow and Russia, the mayor's office fiercely obstructed the reconstruction of residential buildings ... The honeymoon with private owners, it seems, has already ended, the hand and heart of the mayor's office now completely belonged to construction corporations. In confirmation, here is such an example - in three years (from 2017 to 2019) corporations received permits for the construction of 51 million square meters of housing, and not a single permit was issued for reconstruction! They refused under various pretexts, and most often the documents collected by the housing cooperative lay motionless. At the time when the GRP company was beheaded and dispersed (December 2019), which helped the chairmen to bother and complain everywhere about the red tape in the mayor's office, seven housing construction cooperatives were waiting for the last signature on the permits. No signatures have been received so far.

“I think that the documents themselves no longer exist,” one of the chairmen of the housing cooperative suggested in a conversation with NI. - When the head of Five-Storey Building was arrested, all the papers were raked into sacks in a heap, then the investigation additionally seized documents, we were dragged in as witnesses. All this was reflected in hundreds of owners, because most were already at a low start - tomorrow we will get permission, the day after tomorrow we will start construction. We would have lived in normal houses for a long time - the project was designed for 9 months. Now we don’t know anymore ... So much work was done and everything was in vain, the idea itself was compromised. It is unlikely that we will already rise. The mood is - yes, even though they are demolished.

Well, of course! The business is being revived! "Sailor Zheleznyak" leads you forward.

And if I call Levkin, all of a sudden a line has already lined up behind Zheleznyak, and Muscovites are sitting around and don't know anything. The old acquaintance did not work, Levkin is not available. But in the reception office of DepGradPoliticians there were kind secretaries, they gave a bunch of phones where you can find out the question of interest. At thirteen I called. Sorry, but at the other end of the line they were immediately sent to the renovation fund, it seems, for the first time when they heard that there is also the word "reconstruction". Pavel Ivanovich knew about “Sailor Zheleznyak” (he didn’t introduce himself by his last name) and even became very animated that this topic had not died.

“Well stubborn!” He said with admiration. - Set up, then... I'm glad. And how much is there a square meter? I would buy my nephew... He is in my Kolomna, a deputy.

The deputies will not interfere with the house. There, the reconstruction got under way when the head of the Koptevsky municipality, an active representative of United Russia, Olga Glagoleva, joined the housing cooperative.

"Why didn't she build at home? - local resident Alena L. is indignant in social networks - She has built on Koptevskaya 26, where she lives..."

But personally, I do not support this indignation. On the contrary, if every deputy from United Russia took up the reconstruction of at least one house in Moscow, it would be how many residents would keep their nerves and get the opportunity to improve their housing on the spot!

“Reconstruction is a gratifying story, but rather point-like”, - said Vladimir Samokhin, an expert from NDV-Nedvizhimost. - I would leave aside ambitions and sympathies - the market will judge everything itself. There are doubts about the market aspect of housing modernization. One thing is the historical center, where people hold on to their place and where there is no opportunity to buy housing in new houses for adequate money. And quite another - not the outskirts, but not the most prestigious areas, where most of the houses of the 50-60s are located. The superstructure of the house gives additional square meters, but does not fundamentally solve the problem of the old housing stock - the houses will still have the same narrow staircases, outdated layouts...

But the city rights activist and network analyst Maxim Kozlovsky, in a conversation with NI, noticed one very significant thing - Muscovites are not actively involved in the urban planning policy of the capital, they do not know how and do not want to defend their fundamental rights - to decent housing conditions and a favorable environment. Yes, here are the same unreasonable refusals of the mayor's office to reconstruct houses - has someone sued? Someone got from the Moscow authorities an official answer, why is it possible to demolish the property of residents, but not to modernize it?

“Plus our eternal“ swan, crayfish and pike ”, - Maxim laments. - We have a simple meeting about the fate of the house, where it is necessary to reach an agreement between the owners, in practice it can be a difficult task. And the more apartments there are in the house, the more difficult the task is. To build on floors in an apartment building, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the overwhelming majority. It is extremely difficult to do this professionally, with all legal procedures, so that it cannot be disputed. In addition, residents have neither the desire nor the experience to make decisions collectively, because even to solve problems such as an inoperative elevator or a leaky roof, it is extremely difficult for them to get together. I have repeatedly observed with my own eyes how such a global and initially interesting event for everyone, like the superstructure of a building, suddenly acquires many opponents. But I just don’t want to - for a long time, troublesome, incomprehensible... The authorities take advantage of this and bend their own line. You can make claims to them as much as you like, but you still need to start with yourself.