Tatarstan unveiled exciting details on the ambitious project of Innopolis – a satellite city near Kazan. Lee Tai Ker, Head of RSP Archtect Singapore, the project’s key developer, presented a master-plan of the project during the meeting with the Tatar President Rustam Minnikhanov on 20th April 2012.

The project initially implying 50 thousand residents has incredibly expanded to capacity of 150 thousand people. This time the officials told the reporters at the press-conference that Innopolis would be a self-sufficient town providing all facilities necessary for citizens to live independently without travelling to Kazan. “Following Tatarstan’s long-term development strategy Innopolis is the first business project in Russia’s modern history presuming a comprehensive approach to urban development”, Deputy Prime Minister Nikolay Nikiforov stated.

According to Nikiforov, Innopolis is designed to attract high skilled IT specialists, engineers, mostly, young ambitious people with their families to Tatarstan by its modern urban infrastructure and favourable business opportunities able to compete against Moscow or foreign employment proposals.

The outstanding project will be funded among other investors by Vnesheconombank in wake of Rustam Minnikhanov’s recent meeting with Dmitry Medvedev on 16th April when the Russian President promoted the idea of a satellite city creation for high technologies development break through.

The annual revenue of Innopolis business companies is expected to reach 6.2 billion rubles (USD 206.6 million) with nearly 2500 employees, rising up to 120 billion rubles (USD 4 billion) with almost 20 thousand IT specialists involved.

In Lee Tai Ker’s words, the project will be implemented by three stages, each one creating 20 thousand workplaces. The first stage set for 2-5 years implies building road infrastructure, a business incubator, research center, university building and residential houses construction. “Similar urban districts have been long successfully functioning in Singapore”, claimed Lee Tai Ker.

Nikolay Nikiforov also admitted that the Tatat government considers Carnegie Mellon University as the key strategic partner of the Innopolis high school. “If all terms of the contract are agreed upon the Innopolis University will become the Russia’s leading IT specialist training school”, he added.

Nikiforov also said that “the project will soon be presented for public discussion”.

However, while unveiling more and more impressive details of the project the speakers were not inclined to disclose its potential costs, having left this question for the audience to guess.

Photo courtesy of izvestia.ru

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