Culture Park on Zubovsky Boulevard in Moscow has become the headquarters for the organizing committee for “Russia 2018” which will be handling the upcoming Football World Cup. The rent that the organization will be paying was not disclosed, but the director of Knight Frank’s commercial real estate department, Constantin Losyukov, said that the owner had asked for around RUB 45,000 per square meter (annually) plus operating costs. Based on this assessment, the yearly rent could come to RUB 200m. Previously, the 7,500 sqm office building, which is owned Cyprus Basilica Estate Development, served as the offices of the airline Transaero, but that company declared bankruptcy in 2015.
The organizing committee “Russia 2018” currently has 230 employees, but it continues to expand and should hit 355 employees by the end of 2016 and will peak in 2018 with around 1,000 people. World Cup 2018 matches will be held at 12 stadiums in 11 cities of Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Volgograd, Sochi, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Kaliningrad, Samara and Yekaterinburg. Total costs will be about RUB 665bn. The federal budget that’s been allocated to the tournament is RUB 250bn, of which RUB 120bn is being spent on stadiums and a further RUB 130bn on infrastructure: airports, roads, communication facilities. Contributions from businesses are estimated at RUB 230bn and will be spent on the construction of hotels and airport complexes. Regional governments will have to come up with an additional RUB 100bn.
