Patriarch Kirill will have a personal residence in the north-west. As The Bell found out, the territory of the former monastery of the servants of the Theodorian Sovereign in Pushkin, near St. Petersburg, is being restored under it. The cost of the project is 2.8 billion rubles, the customer is the President’s Presidential Management Department.

Secret state order. The fact that Pushkin is building the residence of the patriarch, The Bell told several sources on the construction market of St. Petersburg. A tender for the selection of a contractor was announced at the beginning of autumn 2017 and completed at the end of October. In January 2018 a contract was concluded. The contractor, the company "Geoizol", came to the facility in 2019. It is planned to complete work in December 2021.

The customer of the works is a member of the Administrative Department of the President of the FGBU "Managing the customer for construction and reconstruction of facilities in the North-West Federal District". This unit manager is responsible for construction in the northwest. For example, it controlled the construction of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the Palace of Congresses in Strelna, St. Vladimirsky Skit on Valaam, the Pokrovskaya Church in the village of Turginovo, the Yeltsin Presidential Library and other construction projects, is indicated on the FGBU website.

The contract is called “Reconstruction in the restoration mode with adaptation to the modern use of the complex of buildings and structures of the Feodorovsky town in Tsarskoye Selo of St. Petersburg.”

The contract was immediately classified: only the customer was indicated on the state procurement website and the cost was 2.8 billion rubles. In order to obtain documents and apply for its implementation, the contractors had to send a package of documents about themselves to the Manager of Departments, including a copy of the license of the Federal Security Service of Russia for works related to the state secret. "The degree of secrecy of the information permitted for use is secret," is indicated on the state order website.
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Talk about it. The Manager in response to a request from The Bell said that the work is being carried out "in accordance with the approved project," but they did not answer the question about secrecy. “The complex provides space for use by the Russian Orthodox Church, including when the patriarch is there,” the department said. “The complex is intended for the stay of senior officials of the state, invited guests, including foreign delegations for the period of their visit to St. Petersburg, as well as for visiting parishioners.” The press service of the patriarch did not answer the questions of The Bell.

What will be the residence. The Bell learned the details of the plan from his interlocutors who were familiar with the course of the restoration. The contract for 2.8 billion rubles provides only for the restoration, all the interior decoration - furniture, plumbing, decorative items and the rest - will be purchased separately. The cost of "stuffing" can be comparable to the cost of restoration or exceed them, they say.

The residence of the patriarch will be located in the refectory chamber of the complex, the source said The Bell. The area of ​​construction is almost 3.5 thousand square meters. This building consists of two parts - three-storey and two-storey. From one of the windows of the chambers there will be a view of the Theodore Cathedral, from the others - the garden. A house church, a living room, a library with a billiard room will be located in the ward, the possibility of arranging an elevator is being considered, says one of The Bell's interlocutors. According to him, the Patriarch’s chambers will be set up in the former apartment of the ktitor (church warden or founder of the monastery - The Bell) in the two-story part, and it will also be possible to go out onto the terrace.

The Patriarch’s rooms will be equipped with modern expensive materials, everything will be thought out, up to the “smart home” system, says one of the interviewees of The Bell. Another clarified that this is not about a system for controlling from a mobile phone, but about organizing a control center for controlling electronics in the whole complex. According to him, the planned work is correctly compared with the elite hotel complex: everything that is usually included in it is provided here.

In the white-stone chamber area of ​​almost 2 thousand square meters. m will accommodate hotel rooms for high-ranking guests of the patriarch. It will be connected to the refectory passage. Also, the hotel rooms are equipped with a two-storey deacon's house next to the refectory, interlocutors said.

For persons accompanying the patriarch, they will equip the living quarters in the house in which the caretakers, janitors, watchmen and other employees used to live. The building, which is called “the house for the lower ranks”, is a one-story stone building along the northern wall of the town.

Part of the object is planned to take a museum. In this case, the building will most likely be, like the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, belong to the secular authorities, but part of the profits will be received by the Russian Orthodox Church, says Nikolai Mitrokhin, a researcher at the Eastern Europe Research Center at the University of Bremen in Germany.

The area of ​​the restored site, according to the general plan, is almost 20 thousand square meters. m, building area - 5 thousand square meters. m, the area of ​​gardening - 6.7 thousand square meters. m, is also planned pond area of ​​25 square meters. m

What is Feodorovsky town. This is the name given to the complex of buildings on Academichesky Avenue in the town of Pushkin near Petersburg. Nearby is the Theodore Cathedral, its servants lived on the territory of the town. The cathedral began to be built in 1909 on the instructions of Emperor Nicholas II. The town was built in the image of an old Russian courtyard, surrounded by a stone wall with loopholes and six watchtowers in the corners. It covers an area of ​​about 2.5 hectares. The ensemble includes the white-stone, refectory, pink, yellow and white chambers, houses for the lower ranks and employees, the carriage row and Ktitori garden. In Feodorovsky town, scenes of several films were shot - for example, the moment of execution in 1774 in the film “Russian Riot” directed by Alexander Proshkin, based on “The Captain's Daughter” and “Pugachev's Story”, as well as scenes of battles, fires and the departure of French troops from burning Moscow in the TV series “War and Peace” by Robert Dornhelm.

Since 1918, the town was under the jurisdiction of the Petrograd Agronomic Institute. In 1982 a branch of the hotel “Mir” was placed in buildings with 163 places.

In 1994, the complex was handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church, and even then, with the blessing of Alexy II, they decided to place in it the residence of the patriarch, the museum of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the north-west, a center for pilgrims, icon-painting workshops and a hotel. But the restoration did not begin over the years, and the buildings decayed.

In 2001, the town ensemble was included in the list of architectural monuments of federal significance.

In 2007 they decided to transfer the town to the jurisdiction of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Prior to that, he was under the administration of Tsarskoselsky deanery, uniting the temples of the Pushkin district of St. Petersburg.

In 2010, the town received the status of a synodal monastery, that is, housing for the holy synod (the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church). In the towers they planned to place workshops and a museum of Orthodoxy, the rest of the territory was to occupy housing.
At the same time, plans to place the residence of the patriarch here were reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The publication quoted the head of the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate of Father Vladimir Vigilyansky: “All the Stavropegic Orthodox monasteries are the residences of the patriarch as chief governor, both on Valaam and on Solovki, but there is no patriarchal residence in St. Petersburg, because Patriarch Kirill leads the Northern Capital activity and only this year in October comes to St. Petersburg for the fifth time. " The Moscow residence of the Patriarch is located in Chisty Lane in the building of the former city manor of the noble family Ofrosimovs.

The project of repair and restoration was prepared by 2014, and agreed for the next year. Then they were going to complete the restoration before the beginning of 2019.

Who builds. The general contractor of the works is the St. Petersburg construction company Geoizol, founded in 1995 by the entrepreneur Elena Lashkova.

At first, the company specialized in underground construction, but over time it began to take on any construction work and restoration. She also owns the Pushkin Machine-Building Plant in St. Petersburg.
Geoizol repaired several dozen interchanges and roads in St. Petersburg, including building a cable-stayed bridge across the Neva. The company also worked at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy in St. Petersburg, restored historical buildings in the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve, built the Bureyskaya Hydroelectric Power Station in the Amur Region, and worked at the Krasnaya Polyana facilities in Sochi.

The revenue of LLC Geoizol in 2017 amounted to 6.3 billion rubles, in 2016 - 5.3 billion, and in 2015 - 8.2 billion. Net profit is at least 250 million rubles annually. Since 2016, Geoizol has received state orders for almost 8 billion rubles - without taking into account the contract for the reconstruction of the town of Feodorov, which is not reflected in SPARK.

“We fully complied with the requirements outlined in the procurement - the presence of licenses from the Ministry of Culture, the Federal Security Service, experience in the restoration of cultural heritage sites of federal importance,” the company told The Bell.

Elena Lashkova, the founder of the company, refused to discuss the details of the project, but spoke about the difficult course of restoration work: the buildings included in the complex were in disrepair by the start of work, the brickwork of the walls, vaults and lintels of the dilapidated, painting fragments were almost lost, the Metropolis Garden in general did not live up to our days, it will have to be recreated again. The foundations of the Yellow Chamber and other buildings had to be strengthened and carried out waterproofing works. “We must pay tribute to the skill of the builders of the past centuries. The safety factor of structures that have not been exploited for decades is amazing, as are technical solutions, says Lashkova. “There is not a single rectangular or square room in the whole complex, a domed system of floors and vaults was used, moreover, different masonry was used in the construction of each chamber.”

What's next. Whether the Theodorov town will be transferred to the ROC is unknown. "It can be used by the patriarchy, but be on the balance of secular authorities, like the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow or the current chambers of the patriarch in the building of the St. Petersburg Synod," Nikolai Mitrokhin said.