The management of Pokrovskiy Passage Shopping Center can’t compensate the dwellers of an apartment building that was illegally knocked down in the center of Yekaterinburg.

What actually happened was that about 50% of a two-storey building at 8/10 Rosa Luxemburg St. collapsed and slid right into the foundation pit dug up for an extension to Pokrovskiy Passage on August 6, 2009. The State Construction Surveillance Administration declared this had been due to lack of proper control on the part of the developer and violation of night-time construction regulations.

The shopping center representatives admit the accident was their fault.

‘The shovel operator employed by New Ground, our contractor, accidentally pulled down nine poles that had supported the building. However, this house was 90% worn-out, so it could have collapsed on its own in just two or three years,’ says Pokrovskiy Passage Shopping Center’s founder Igor Vladimirov.

The investor said the company was ready to make up for the damage done to the dwellers and to provide them with new housing (at the price of 50,000 RUR per sq m), but not a single family out of seven households located in the building has yet agreed to these terms. The victims insist their neighbors (whose house was also in the way of the developers and was eventually pulled down) were offered 100,000 RUR per sq m of housing.