Law practice: Construction & Real Estate / Environmental Law / Government Relations
Client’s objective:
Law support for a development project under non-standard urban planning restrictions — including a sanitary protection zone for Moscow’s drinking water supply, the presence of a Russian Ministry of Defense facility, and plans to build local public infrastructure on the site.
What we did:
We conducted a detailed law audit of the land plot to identify all urban planning restrictions and prohibitions, and developed a step-by-step law action plan to bring the site into a buildable status.
Due to the large area of the site, the list of restrictions included: planned construction of local infrastructure (power lines, a road, and an electric substation), a protective zone for a state geodetic network point, and a communication line operated by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
A critical issue was the overlap of one-third of the land with sanitary protection zones (SPZs), including the first belt and the highly regulated second belt — areas where construction is completely prohibited.
The challenge lay in the fact that the SPZ boundaries are classified, and the authorities do not provide developers with the exact coordinates unless they have clearance for access to state secrets.
Result:
Client’s objective:
Law support for a development project under non-standard urban planning restrictions — including a sanitary protection zone for Moscow’s drinking water supply, the presence of a Russian Ministry of Defense facility, and plans to build local public infrastructure on the site.
What we did:
We conducted a detailed law audit of the land plot to identify all urban planning restrictions and prohibitions, and developed a step-by-step law action plan to bring the site into a buildable status.
Due to the large area of the site, the list of restrictions included: planned construction of local infrastructure (power lines, a road, and an electric substation), a protective zone for a state geodetic network point, and a communication line operated by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
A critical issue was the overlap of one-third of the land with sanitary protection zones (SPZs), including the first belt and the highly regulated second belt — areas where construction is completely prohibited.
The challenge lay in the fact that the SPZ boundaries are classified, and the authorities do not provide developers with the exact coordinates unless they have clearance for access to state secrets.
Result:
- We prepared a step-by-step roadmap for relocating existing utility networks to the boundaries of the plot and issued recommendations on land surveying to designate non-buildable zones as internal roads.
- Provided guidance to the engineering and design team on how to independently determine the coordinates of the sanitary protection zones (SPZs), using textual boundary descriptions available in the non-classified portions of regulatory documents.
- A detailed action plan was developed to initiate a concession agreement between the developer and the local administration for the improvement of the riverfront and beach infrastructure within the first sanitary protection zone (SPZ), which intersects the site. This area, after boundary clarification and removal of the first SPZ from the site’s total area, was determined to be federal property and withdrawn from commercial use.