Billionaire Roman Abramovich has bought a dilapidated pavilion in Gorky Park that will be renovated and used to house a modern art center run by his partner Darya Zhukova, a news report said Friday.
The Hexagon pavilion in Gorky Park and an unused building in the center of the park were sold as a single lot for 433 million rubles ($13.7 million), the Russian Auction House said on its website. The cost of restoration may run up to another $50 million before the sites are ready to house Zhukova's Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Kommersant reported.
The Hexagon pavilion was built in 1923 and used initially as an exhibition center for Soviet agricultural machinery. The building was ravaged by a series of fires in the 1970s and 1980s and hasn't been used since, Lenta.ru reported.
The building has been granted cultural heritage status, and its restoration and maintenance are among the conditions of its sale, the auctioneers said.
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