It appears that the apartments in Aston Plaza, located in Radischev and Gurzufskaya St. in Yekaterinburg, do not enjoy great demand. Aston’s Chairman Vyacheslav Trapeznikov admitted in the course of a TV interview that only one-third of apartments had been sold so far, even though the commissioning has been scheduled for the third quarter of 2008.

A number of experts report there may be several reasons for this.

Firstly, the land allotment where Aston Plaza is located actually borders with Ivanovskoye cemetery, and this is believed to decrease an apartment’s popularity. ‘If an apartment is overlooking a cemetery with its graves, this might easily scare the customers off. In fact, a cemetery is believed to be a sacred place, so I feel locating an apartment building right next to it isn’t very ethical. I personally wouldn’t like to buy a place in a building like this,’ says Oksana Puts, Director of Arbat real estate agency.

On top of that, the building isn’t fitted with a convenient driveway or enough parking lots.

Finally, Aston Plaza has already been involved in a number of scandals. The building deprived the neighboring dwellings of sunshine and the developers never thought of this possibility or compensatory measures at the design and development stage, apparently. So, Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities insist on freezing the illegal construction process. The authorities had to react to the local residents’ numerous complaints and conduct an investigation that revealed that this high-rise building infringes on the neighboring dwellers’ natural right to nice environment. As a result, the public prosecution authorities protest against the illegal construction permit and have already taken legal action against Aston’s top executive.