The Governor Indicated Who Was Delaying The Exit From The Theater

Photo: Mikhail Ognev / / Archive

The process of building the lobby of the Teatralnaya metro station and opening it, as planned, in 2028, has encountered an obstacle that officials need to overcome as soon as possible. The debate about where to place it has not subsided yet, and even more so — emotions. The governor of St. Petersburg remembered about the “celebrities”, the veteran of the service sector — about the residents. And Valery Gergiev has been thinking about the theater for a long time.

The Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, met with residents of the Central District the day before. TV channel 78, which was present at the meeting, showed footage of the mayor telling them about the metro — it was about the “Theater”.

“We have different celebrities, they decided that the exit from the subway should not be near the theater,” Beglov said. He recalled that at the same time in Moscow, the exit from the subway is located next to the Bolshoi Theater: “There is a normal exit there. When I started to figure it out, I asked: how are we going to get off the subway? — “I don’t know.” There’s nowhere to go. A ventilation shaft was made and designed there. It will be made a little differently, this one is still working. And there is no exit from the subway.”

According to Beglov, officials decided that since it was not at the theater, then the exit could be made at the corner of the Decembrists and Lermontovsky on the site of the Soviet House of Life, which turned into a shopping complex, opposite the synagogue. According to the governor, officials are still negotiating to buy it out, recognizing that the building was legally privatized and now belongs to an elderly St. Petersburg resident.

“I know this grandfather. He is 90 years old. He used to do communal work in the city. He privatized — correctly and according to the law. Now we are buying him out, haggling, almost haggling to make an exit from the subway there. Until we buy it out, we have no right to design, because we need to conduct surveys there,” the governor added.

By the way, according to Fontanka, if you place the exit from Teatralnaya on Lermontovsky Prospekt, in addition to the already built facilities of the station, you will have to lay a new 250-300-meter tunnel from the platform to the escalators.

Photo: screenshot of the Google Maps service page

The man the governor is talking about is not just some grandfather. It’s about Yuri Filatov. He was born in 1931, a native of Kronstadt. Since the 60s, he has been in the leadership of the city, chairman of the local executive committee. In 1978, under Grigory Romanov, he was appointed head of the Department of Consumer Services of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council. He was engaged in the construction and operation of Household Houses. In the 1990s, he successfully integrated into a new life. In addition to his main work, he was engaged in other projects, in particular, for a long time he was a member and then the head of the supervisory board of Bank St. Petersburg (now Alexander Saveliev holds this post).

Yuri Filatov Photo: website of the Public Council for the Development of Small Business under the Governor of St. Petersburg

The building mentioned by Alexander Beglov belongs to JSC “Service”. This is one of the oldest St. Petersburg legal entities, which back in 1992 received ownership of almost all Leningrad Household Houses. It was headed, of course, by the head of the Consumer Services Department of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council, Yuri Filatov. Now history will no longer remember how he turned out to be the largest shareholder of JSC, but, according to the latest publicly available documents, he owns 44.2% of the company. At the same time, the share of ordinary (voting) shares is 53.9%. The company’s card says that he has been managing the “Service” and its legal successors since 1978. In May 2024, Yuri Filatov was re-elected CEO for a five-year term at the shareholders’ meeting.

Some of the household facilities have changed hands since 1992, but at least 9 buildings and premises throughout the city remain at the disposal of Services and their CEO. Among them, in addition to Lermontovsky, 1, there is also a building at Suvorovsky, 35, Narvsky, 18, Engels, 147, Marshal Zakharov, 21 (letters E and Z), Kollontai, 30, Svetlanovsky, 36 and Bucharest, 142. Almost all, except Lermontovsky, Suvorovsky and Narva, are typical two-storey Soviet Houses of everyday life, which have turned into small shopping complexes and chain stores. Some Household Houses, such as 80 Babushkina Street, became the property of other legal entities, where the Service received minority shares.

According to the latest financial statements of JSC “Service”, its revenue is 168 million rubles, net profit is 28 million. The company paid 10.2 million rubles to its shareholders in the form of dividends.

The cadastral value of the five—storey building at the beginning of Lermontovsky Prospekt built in 1968 with an area of 5.9 thousand m2 is 491 million rubles, plus a plot of 1400 m2 of land under it — another 26 million. In total, it turns out about 517 million, or 88 thousand rubles per 1 m2. At the same time, detached buildings in the neighborhood on ad sites are estimated to be much more expensive — about 120-130 thousand rubles per 1 m2. If we evaluate the house at Lermontovsky 1 at this level, its market value could be estimated at 700-760 million rubles, excluding the income it brings. Earlier it was said that the amount of the buyout could amount to up to 1 billion rubles.

Yuri Filatov, in a conversation with Fontanka, said that the question of the fate of the Household was last raised more than three months ago and they did not come to a final decision.

He said that he strongly disagrees with the idea of demolishing his building for the construction of a subway lobby. As an argument, he cites the collected five thousand votes of residents of the surrounding neighborhoods in defense of the House of Life, which the entrepreneurs transferred to Smolny. “The House of life is really such now — it houses more than 60 enterprises providing household services, dry cleaning and tailoring,” says Yuri Filatov. — According to the law, if there is an alternative, we do not have the right to seize property. And there is an alternative — at the Theater. A lot has already been done in this area. The second alternative is the playground at 37 Dekabristov Street. There will be no need to demolish anything there.”

At the same time, in addition to numerous institutions of services, the owner of the building offers, according to the website, office space.

There has been a dispute over where to build exits from the Teatralnaya for many years, including discussions in the context of possible demolition of houses. For a long time it was assumed that the first exit would be on the square near the theater, and the second on the site of the House of Everyday Life. The exit to the square was planned at the corner of Glinka and Dekabristov streets, but the idea of going to the square always found opponents in the person of the leadership of the Mariinsky and Valery Gergiev personally.

In 2020, it became known that the theater was discussing with the city the transfer of the main exit to the House of Everyday Life.

“We decided, first of all, to implement the lobby, which will be located far from the Mariinsky Theater building, on the side of Lermontovsky Prospekt,” Vice-Governor Maxim Sokolov told Fontanka. After that, Beglov directly said that there would be no exit to the square. In 2021, the task for the development of a project for the lobby directly indicated the place of the House of Life.

The terms of reference for the development of design documentation for the construction of the vestibule of the Teatralnaya station indicate the location of the second exit “at the intersection of Glinka and Dekabristov streets should not be considered as possible.”

According to the results of the competition, the project itself was to be prepared by Transproekt Engineering LLC for 7.6 million rubles by October 31, 2022. They were asked to consider possible locations for the second lobby of the Teatralnaya station and accept as the first site at 1/44 Lermontovsky Prospekt, where the House of Everyday Life is currently located.

In 2022, the Committee for the Development of transport infrastructure conducted a survey on where the second exit from the metro should be. The offer to place it at a nearby gas station won. That is, at the beginning of 2023, it was planned that there would be no exit from the theater itself, but they would be located near the House of Life and at the gas station.

The issue of the construction of the Teatralnaya station suddenly returned again after Gergiev’s public criticism in the spring of this year.

“[The issue of preserving the theater has been raised] After the thoughtless, stupid, not to say wrecking policy of the city’s leadership, which gave permission to build a subway directly under the Mariinsky Theater, made itself felt. Although we had a chance to do without it. And the previous leadership of the city gave me every possible guarantee that they would not drill anything under the theater,” Gergiev said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta. He noted that the building is shaking every day — a major tremor is felt even on the upper rehearsal stage.

In the “Metrostroy of the Northern Capital”, Gergiev’s criticism was answered that for a long time they had not been carrying out any work at depth that could have a dynamic effect, tunneling equipment was not used.

Ksenia Klochkova, Denis Lebedev, Nikolai Kudin,