Maxim Levchenko: For a Long time "I did Not Take The sword"

- For a long time, I “didn’t take the sword in my hands”, I didn’t write about how Fort Group Moscow projects develop.

There are some reasons for this.

All our facilities in Moscow are in the process of working out of further changes. Here, the principle of “Measure seven times, cut once” works for one hundred percent. Re-concept is much more difficult than a start from scratch.

I will go back to the Moscow topic as soon as some significant issue appears, but for now I’ll focus on my native Saint-Petersburg.

Besides, I am going to talk about what is directly connected to Moscow.

I will explain lately.

Everything is quite repetitive and morally and physically outdated.

Even a such successful project as “The City Mall”, located near Pionerskaya metro station in a very densely populated area of St. Petersburg, requires re-conception — some changes in its logistics, in its store formats, tenant locations, and in design.

What used to be fresh, relevant, modern yesterday, today looks pretty much like a grandmother's jacket, eaten by moth, and tomorrow will probably smell like a pair of socks worn several days in a row.

What is exactly a reason that Fort Group is not satisfied about The City Mall? It seems that the occupancy rate is 100 percent full, there is a constant increase in tenant turnover and revenue – everything works perfectly. As we say, the best is the enemy of the good. But! In the case of a shopping mall, you must to think ten to fifteen years ahead. And “The city mall” is already ten years old.

A lot of shopping and entertainment complexes were built in 2000s. They were constructed with cheap “sandwich panels” and they all look similar to each other, like orphans from a shelter. You know, like a gloomy sh*t, which has nothing in common with a modern architecture.

Today there is a totally different way of a construction of public buildings, shopping and entertainment centers. Designers of XXI century got back to the functionalism of the 30-s and removed all unnecessary elements from the facades and walls, including vulgar curls, roses, angels, as well as “posh” interiors. Today’s concept is about to distinguish a retro style and a bad taste. The prior key elements are logistics and functional use of the building, but not the thingies on the facade.

In fact, those things that look good on ancient buildings don’t fit in a modern architecture at all. When we started a re-concept in The City Mall, we had a goal of total reloading, by improving logistics and shop displays visibility, fundamentally improving the food court, filling the fourth floor with new content.

According to the original plan, the food court remained the same place, but got a modern design: light, tile, decoration, furniture. I have noticed that, during rush hours, there is literally lack of space, people are standing with trays, waiting for a table.
This is three hundred seats, and there are no supplies to increase the area with this current location.

So, we made a radical decision to move the food court to the fourth floor of the City Mall, where we found valuable three and a half thousand square meters for these purposes.

We don’t have such a free space nn the second or third floor.

Twenty establishments will be able to freely settle down on the top floor, there will be a thousand (1000!) seats, some of them with a park and a city view. The space is huge!

We realized that the reorganization was needed. Ten years ago, actual assortment of restaurants did not exist at all.

However, it was menacing to start the transfer of the food court, because we’ve never done before. Although everything happens once for the first time.

In any case, the momentum is important, one step forward. No one wants to break the usual order, take himself out of the comfort zone and to go somewhere, to do something new. It's easier to live by old patterns.

The project manager is getting familiar numbers from the phonebook for years, calling up his tenants’ network. Journalists are acting in a similar way, receiving information from the same newsmakers. But sometimes you need to put on your boots, to take a shovel and go to the barnyard - clean the stables.
Like they did once in London, by turning the British capital from a city with a settling fast food, which barely could be called a food, into the world gastronomic center.

It seems that the wave has reached our shores.

Last couple of years, a gastronomic revolution is happening in St. Petersburg, in, I would say in a Soviet way, the sphere of public catering. The author's cuisine comes to the fore, the geography of the “specialties” is also expanding, today’s leaders on the gastronomic stage are exotic Hawaii, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, and also quite traditional Japan, China, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Italy, Turkey.

Of course, and Russian cuisine did not disappear anywhere. Numerous continents and cultures mixed up!

Curiously, the author cuisine and small-formats sometimes overtake great restaurants. It’s more complicated for “Monsters” to stay dynamic and maneuverable. Yes, and much more expensive, as well. A bar with an author’s kitchen for 10-15 tables where visitors alternate every hour and a half it’s a totally different story.

This artistic and culinary movement reminds me St. Petersburg’s rock culture in the 80s.

I cannot say if that rock is still alive, or into what it was reborn, but the fact that St. Petersburg gastronomy is developing just as rapidly and on about the same streets - Rubinstein, Liteyny, Kirochnaya, Mayakovskaya, Vosstaniya, Vilensky Lane.

By the way, I’ve noticed that in Moscow there less such successful concepts. But there are markets with great food marketplaces, which amount grows on eyes, in compare with St. Petersburg, where the authorities still not dare to handover markets to the professionals.

Meanwhile, it is the gastronomic streets that form the actual taste of St. Petersburg.

Establishments located on them (not all, but many of them) are distinguished by author's cuisine. There is delicious food, wine and affordable prices. Expensive furniture, decoration and dishes are no longer the main characters. Taste and soul are in priority now.
We are about to create something like this in the City Mall, and then we’ll extend this experience to our other malls, including Moscow’s ones.

Our goal is to create the widest offer for different target audiences: depending on taste, shade and wallet. 

So, here are some details of the project in The City Mall:

We’ll leave the half of the space for traditional fast food. Ten operators will work here, and the landing zone will count at least 600 seats.

A separate space - for is “the gastronomic feast” for 400 places, where there will be about 15 different cuisines, including bars with wine, coffee and eclairs.
In fact, we plan to build a giant restaurant, which will include many different little restaurants with their own kitchen and a bar with an capacity from 30 to 70 meters with a common sitting zone. In addition to the benefits and impressive choice of different options for the consumer, it is also an opportunity for medium-sized projects (I don’t like the words “start-up” or “small business”, it smelles like an official statistics) and interesting ideas to reach the mass consumer, a wide audience.
It requires significant investment to open a large restaurant: in the rental or purchase of premises, interior decoration, engineering communications ...

We will have all this already, and the authors of interesting concepts will just have to build a kitchen for themselves, to start preparing tasty, high-quality and reasonable priced food, to offer an ingeniously selected wine. Actually just, to be engaged in the main business, without being distracted by anything else.

For 30-70 square meters the rent will turn out quite affordably.
We involved Boris Lvovsky’s studio, that specializes in restaurant interiors, to create an original planning solutions and design of the gastronomic space called The City Food,.

I have no doubt that this will perfectly work out.

The opening of City Food is scheduled for March 2019.