It appears that European investors are starting to pay more attention to Russia’s growing real estate market, as Russian projects invariably get a lot of attention at international exhibitions as well as more and more financing by international investors. Die Welt, Bayerische Staatszeitung, and Wirtschaftsblatt observed on October 10, 2007, October 5, 2007, and October 25, 2007, respectively, that Russia had never taken a more active part in EXPO REAL than in the fall of 2007 (there were about fifty Russian participants altogether, which is 25% more than a year earlier). Then, the media provide some fairly extensive news coverage for RENOVA Stroy Group’s Academic construction project currently implemented in Yekaterinburg. The Property Magazine, The Competence Circle, and The Moscow Times Real Estate published reports on the start of the construction process, laying special emphasis on the uniqueness and the grand scale of the project as well as on its multi-functional nature.

RENOVA Stroy Group began the construction process on October 12, 2007. The first implementation stage provides for the putting up of several blocks of economy class dwellings (1,075 apartments altogether) and an underground parking lot fit for 700 cars, with all the housing maintenance and public services as well as commercial infrastructure provided. The future Academic district will be equipped with parking lots fit for a total of 160,000 cars; it will offer its dwellers more than 120,000 square meters of housing and commercial estate and a kindergarten for 100 children. The first stage of the project will have been completed by the second quarter of 2009.