$30 Million Center for City

Lured by high rents and high demand for prime Moscow real estate, a Russian trading and construction firm plans to complete a vast $30-million business center in northern Moscow by the end of this year, company officials said.Albert Yakovlev, president of the state-controlled Center for Economic Development and Trade, said that the nine-story, 30,000 square-meter structure, located on Prospekt Mira near the Rizhski train station, will include offices, shops, exhibition halls, two restaurants, bars, a supermarket, gym, tennis court, sauna, five floors of underground parking and possibly a hotel.Western-standard offices will occupy 10,000 square meters and annual leases will range from $800 to $1,200 per square meter, Yakovlev said, adding that his company was trying to negotiate lease contracts with several foreign firms, including General Motors and former Yugoslavia's Liyblians Bank. According to real estate sources, prime commercial space in Moscow presently leases for well under $1,000 per square meter."To get good-quality office space in Moscow is a real problem and there is a big shortage of flexible space," said Nicolas Goodwin, director of the British real estate firm, Ferguson Hollis. "Here, top prices for office rent are higher than, say, in London, but the quality is significantly lower."We have many requests from abroad to find an office for Moscow and we can't satisfy them."Yakovlev said that the project was being financed with a three-year hard-currency loan from Russia's Vneshtorgbank at an annual interest rate of 9 percent. He said his company planned to recoup its investment within 2 1/2 years.The building, begun in the early 1980s, was originally intended to become a fashion house. But the former Light Industry Ministry, then the building's owner, ran out of money and turned the project over to Yakovlev. Construction resumed last September.Yakovlev contracted the French construction company Patricia to build the center using foreign and Russian materials. The completion deadline is December.Thierry Philip, Patricia's economic director, said that offices would include mobile walls to allow tenants to tailor their space."It will be a unique building for Moscow," he said.