After a tumultuous year that curtailed or shelved lots of infrastructure spending plans the region of Nizhny Novgorod is pitching in to ultimately realize one of its longest-playing project ideas, the Satis technopark. The project has been kicking around for almost six years and has an estimated $52m price tag. To finish Phase 1 will cost $17.3m and regional officials are putting up half of it to finally get the technopark and its business incubator up and running.
Earlier this month Nizhny Novgorod regional officials announced a $9.2m 2010 earmark from both regional and federal coffers for construction of Phase 1 of the Satis technopark, a $17.3m incubator. The complex is located in the village of Satis not far from one of Russia’s nuclear R&D hubs, Sarov.
To complete the first stage of the project by December 2010, the region reportedly contracted Sarov-based engineering and construction company SarovGidroMontazh in late December to build and fully equip a main facility, hotel complex, heating plant and a transformer substation.
In for high-profile membership and $930m revenue
The Satis project was first conceived in 2004. The idea was to create one of Russia’s largest innovation infrastructures for investors and high-caliber global players like Microsoft or Intel. The plan also included using the complex for regional projects and developments in experimental physics, IT, energy saving, medicine and other areas.
The goal was to have between 100 and 200 small and medium-sized investors as residents and by 2015 generate an estimated $930m in annual revenue.
According to officials, the technopark already had ten residents in late 2006, and “around a hundred Russian and international investors were interested in participating in the project.”
$50m and counting
Between 2004 and 2007 there was hardly any development of the technopark. Then Moscow’s AFK Sistema, announced as the technopark’s prime investor, pledged more than $13m between 2007 and 2009. The RF and NN regional governments said they would kick in another $12m.
In 2006 a small number of key R&D and production facilities and some engineering infrastructure were already in place, officials said, but those were mostly housed at the park’s base company, the Sarov Nuclear Center. In late 2009, RF Prime Minister Vladimir Putin decreed another $27m for park development.
With the new pledge of $9.2m for the incubator, the price tag for the proposed 40,000-square-meter technopark could be $60-80m when completed, making it one of the largest technopark/incubators in Russia.
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