Parking lots are pulled out of the ground – Newspaper Kommersant No. 183 (7384) dated 10/04/2022

Moscow developers are asking the mayor’s office to give them the opportunity to place flat parking lots next to apartment buildings. It is often unprofitable for them to build underground garages because of their high cost. Lawyers believe that in this way developers are trying to ensure that such parking lots are taken into account in the standard for the required number of parking spaces in new buildings.

At the disposal of Kommersant was a letter from the Executive Director of the Moscow Investors Club (KIM; unites capital developers) Vladislav Preobrazhensky dated September 23 to the Vice Mayor of Moscow and the head of the city’s construction complex Andrei Bochkarev with a request to include the type of permitted use (VRI) of the land “Parking of vehicles” in land use and development rules (PZZ) of the city. The press service of the construction complex did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

One of the orders of Rosreestr allows developers to obtain permission to place above-ground and underground parking lots, personal garages of owners, parking lots for official and public transport, as well as flat parking lots. But since August 13, 2022, the placement of flat parking lots for personal vehicles of the owners of residential complexes has been allocated into a separate VRI, but this item is now absent in the Moscow Land Regulations. Thus, developers will not be able to legally place such parking lots near new buildings. In KIM, they fear that this will cause numerous complaints from residents to the city authorities.

The placement of flat parking, including guest parking, is provided for in the vast majority of development projects, adds Pavel Antonov, director of legal affairs at A101 Group of Companies. Moreover, developers are required by law to comply with the standards for the placement of guest parking for apartment buildings, and they can only be created in flat parking lots, adds Andrey Kirsanov, deputy general director of MR Group.

It is obvious that the changes that have appeared in the classifier for parking of vehicles must be correlated with other regulations, including the Moscow Land Regulations, notes Oleg Grishunin, Director for Legal and Corporate Affairs of the BEL Development Group of Companies. Developers who nevertheless place flat parking lots are already receiving orders to eliminate them, but from January 2023 they will be fined, Vladislav Preobrazhensky explained. In extreme cases, for misuse of land, the authorities can terminate the lease agreement with the developer and withdraw the site, he adds. This will create difficulties for developers who want to provide a comfortable living environment for residents of houses, Mr. Grishunin agrees.

Alexandra Belous, president of the synergy intersectoral association of self-regulators in the field of construction and design, says that Moscow developers have never placed separate flat parking lots, and residents are not forbidden to leave cars in the courtyard of a residential building with a roadway, but this is not considered parking. The inability to build flat parking can be a problem for the developer, she warns.

According to the expert, developers often cannot solve the issue of building a sufficient number of underground parking spaces for residents due to the high cost of such work: their cost can reach from 0.9 million to 2 million rubles. According to bnMap.pro, the average price of parking in new buildings in Moscow for their residents is 2.7 million rubles.

Almaz Kuchembaev, head of the Kuchembaev & Partners legal agency, believes that KIM’s initiative requires a more detailed formulation. Otherwise, he continues, when obtaining a permit for the construction of houses, there may be a risk that the standard for the number of required parking spaces will be calculated not only at the expense of car spaces, covered parking lots and spaces in the yards, but also at the expense of roadside pockets and flat parking lots next to residential complex. The cost of apartments depends on the availability of parking lots, reminds Alexandra Belous. “But additional parking spaces in flat parking lots are not in the exclusive use of the owners of the premises of an apartment building,” sums up Mr. Kuchembaev.

Daria Andrianova