The foreign private production and trading company Univest-M will invest $350 million in the construction of a residential compound ‘Kaskad’ in Minsk, director general of the company Vladimir Zdobnov told a press conference dedicated to the laying down of the first stone in the place of the future residential compound.

The residential compound is one of the large-scale construction projects in the centre of the capital. The compound will occupy 16 hectares and will include 125,000 square metres of housing, social, transport, trading, sports and educational facilities.

The Univest-M company has already invested around $39 million in the national and city budgets to develop the site. For example, several outdated facilities such as bus depot No 2 and others have been redeployed. The first house is slated for completion in Q4 2009. The residential area will be delivered in 2015. Vladimir Zdobnov noted that the concept of the project is based on three pillars: ecology, comfort, safety.

Speaking about the prices Vladimir Zdobnov said that this is not going to be upscale housing. It is designed for middle class of city dwellers.” The price will be approximately $1,200-1,300 per 1 square meter.

In turn, the chairman of the architecture and town planning department of the Minsk city council, chief architect of the capital Viktor Nikitin said that the project aims to address one urgent town planning issue. “Unfortunately the territory of Minsk is small and not enough for mass district construction. Therefore we need to demolish old buildings. Univest-M is the first investor who has risked making this move in the centre of the capital,” Viktor Nikitin informed.

Viktor Nikitin said that he was happy that the city has been growing more attractive for investors and added that several other sites for similar projects are under consideration now.

The Univest-M group of companies founded by the Univest consulting and trading GmbH arrived in Belarus in 2001. It is the biggest supplier, processor and exporter of oil products in the country and is one of the largest operators in the Belarusian real estate market.