“The bar is set very high”
The meeting of the Town Planning Council was chaired by Governor Andrei Bocharov in the village of Stepnoy, Gorodishchensky District. More recently, it was an unremarkable point on the map. And now it is just right here to bring builders, designers and teachers on an excursion – a new school was commissioned here in June this year. Yes, one that can give odds even to some Volgograd educational institutions.
Its three floors house 20 classrooms with modern interactive equipment, as well as workshops equipped with everything necessary for the labor education of boys and girls, spacious music and sports halls, a library with high-speed Internet access and a stylish dining room. For primary school students, a bedroom with a playroom was organized here.
This educational institution has everything for distance learning – a need, alas, of today. And also – a landscaped adjacent territory, a large stadium with an artificial turf, a sports town and a recreation area.
On September 1, the new school will accept children from Steppe and the villages closest to it – Tsaritsyno, Studeno-Yablonovka, Rossoshki, Krasny Pakhar, Novaya Nadezhda. Children have yet to appreciate its benefits. But the director, Alexander Tulupov, has no doubts: this educational institution has become a real decoration and pride of the village.
– A rural school is more than a school! – he thinks. – This is a cultural, leisure and sports center. Our old building, although strong, is very cramped. It was not possible to organize useful leisure for the children there, but here everything is there for both our students and teachers! ..
Experts are confident: the school in Stepnoye dictates new standards for the construction of educational and social institutions.
“I am happy for the rural children who will study in such a modern, colorful school,” says Alexander Vyazmin, a former chief architect of the Volgograd region, a member of the Public Chamber of the region. – The region can be proud of this object. The bar is set very high!
Governor Andrei Bocharov inspected the readiness of the new school by the beginning of the school year and also gave it a solid “five”.
“We went the right way when we decided to design this rural school according to the most modern standards,” he said after inspecting the building. – We will continue to apply this approach.
There are prerequisites for growth
The new school in Stepnoye is not the only modern facility that has appeared in the region in recent years. Since 2014, 57 kindergartens have been built and reconstructed from scratch, three schools have been put into operation, including for the first time since Soviet times – two for 1000 places at once.
Today, in the Kirovsky district of Volgograd, a school for 800 students is being built under the Stimul program, which is part of the Housing and Urban Environment national project. Large-scale construction of the Volgograd bypass and the GTS complex in the Volgo-Akhtubinskaya floodplain began.
And that’s not all. As it sounded at the City Planning Council, the construction industry has good prospects. Despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic, it is moving forward confidently and at a good pace, acting as the locomotive of the Volgograd economy.
The figures inspire optimism: in January – June 2020, the construction sector of the region demonstrates an increase of 20%. The builders themselves admit that this is the result of state support, the participation of the region in national projects, as well as the start of the presidential program of preferential mortgages at 6.5% per annum, and the improvement of regional support mechanisms for families purchasing apartments in new buildings.
There are prerequisites for a further increase in the volume of housing construction. Much attention is now being paid to this both at the federal and regional levels. And not only in words.
“The provision of land plots to investors for lease without tenders and those measures to support bona fide companies that undertake the completion of problem houses have a positive effect on the industry,” Governor Andrei Bocharov said at the Council. – We will continue this course, attracting funds from the Federal Fund for the Protection of the Rights of Shareholders. Before that, we only solved the problem on our own.
Supported by the Federation
But it is not enough just to increase the volume of housing construction – it should be convenient and comfortable for people to live in new houses. That is why the regional authorities insisted on shifting the vector of development of housing construction from infill development, which showed complete hopelessness, to integrated development of territories with all the necessary infrastructure and mandatory improvement of adjacent territories.
The positive experience of the Volgograd Region was approved at the federal level. The other day Volgograd was visited by the Minister of Construction and Housing and Communal Services Vladimir Yakushev. He supported the region’s proposals on the implementation of programs for the renovation of housing and communal services in municipalities, the provision of housing for orphans with the involvement of federal funds and the region’s desire to quickly solve the problem with equity holders.
And before that, let us recall, the Ministry of Construction included our region in the top 10 best constituent entities of the Russian Federation for the implementation of programs for the formation of a comfortable urban environment. Over the past six years, about 750 improvement projects have been implemented in the Volgograd Region. This year, 177 more public and courtyard spaces on the territory of 131 settlements are waiting for their transformation.
Now the regional authorities are setting a new task – to ensure a “construction boom” in municipalities and in rural areas, in particular. The governor assured that the region will stimulate companies that are ready to enter the municipalities.
– And to create a demand for new housing in the village, we will consider the possibility of expanding rural mortgage, – said Andrei Bocharov at the Town Planning Council.
Fast and without cheating
Much attention was paid at the meeting to the transition to an escrow account system as one of the effective measures to protect the rights of equity holders.
As a reminder, since the summer of 2019 in Russia, the mechanism of shared construction has been replaced by project financing using escrow technology. Now buyers of apartments (including those at the stage of the foundation pit) do not have to pay money directly to developers, but transfer them to the bank to a special account, which is frozen until the completion of construction and the company fully fulfills its obligations. At the same time, banks will give money to developers for a project for the construction of residential buildings. If the company has difficulties with completing the house, the money from the escrow account will be returned to the buyer.
Currently, more than 114 thousand square meters of housing in the region are being built according to the escrow system. The Governor believes that such a mechanism is the future, and asked the Volgograd developers to more actively engage in the use of escrow accounts.
– This is necessary so that after the completion of projects that are being built according to the “old scheme”, without interruption, continue construction already within the framework of project financing, – he explained.
The City Planning Council, which was held on the eve of the Builder’s Day, ended with the awarding of the best workers in the industry. Many warm words and congratulations were addressed to them, because the builder is one of the most responsible, honorable and respected professions.
By erecting houses, factories, factories, hospitals, schools and universities, builders at all times ensured cultural, scientific and technological progress. It is they who give us the joy of housewarming, make the life of Volgograd residents more comfortable and ultimately happier.