DOWNTOWN : Firm Is Designing Russian Center

When Russian conqueror Peter the Great sought to build St. Petersburg more than 200 years ago, he called in Europe’s finest architects.

Considered one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, St. Petersburg was alternately called “the Venice of the North” because of its canals and “a window on the West” because of Peter’s interest in and use of Western influences.

So it seems appropriate that the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is now designing a “World Financial Center” in St. Petersburg to make it easier for Americans and Europeans to do business in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The architects at the Downtown office of the firm are designing the center, which will include a complex of offices, apartments, hotel rooms and stores. Several American companies, including Procter & Gamble, IBM and BASF, have signed letters of intent to move into the complex, according to developer Robert L. Schwartz and Russian consultant Sergei Beliaev.

The project is aimed at helping American and European businesses set up offices in the former Soviet Union now that the country is moving to a market economy. The center will allow the business people to conduct business and also live there comfortably with their families.

“There are no real suitable office spaces as we know it and no places for European and American families to stay now,” said Kenneth A. Soldan, a partner in the architectural firm.

“With the communist system, there was no need for office space,” said Schwartz, the Atlanta-based developer who is building the estimated $400-million project with Russian and Swedish partners.

Schwartz said he hired the Los Angeles branch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill--which also has offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Washington, London and Hong Kong--because of the firm’s international reputation and his previous business dealings with the company.

The St. Petersburg complex is to be built on 21 acres in a residential area just outside the city, which is about 400 miles northwest of Moscow.

Planned are a 30-story, 600-room business hotel, a 500-unit apartment complex and a 20-story office building.

The ground floor of the six-level apartment building will house a laundry business, a health club and other businesses catering to the resident families.

Schwartz said he hopes to begin construction in the spring. St. Petersburg city leaders have already approved the project and the developers are now securing financing, according to Schwartz and Beliaev, a Russian consultant who has helped with the project since it was conceived in 1990.