Residential complex “Ostrov”, being built by “Donstroy” in the Mnevnicheskaya floodplain in the west of Moscow, continues to acquire sad glory even before the completion of construction. At the end of April, a worker died there, having fallen from a great height, in March there was a mass brawl of migrant workers there. But it seems that the company’s management simply does not care about such “trifles”. The correspondent of “Version” visited the scene and tried to assess the conditions in which people work.
According to the results of the first quarter of 2023, DonStroy became the leader in sales of business-class housing in Moscow. According to Metrium’s calculations, its revenue (receipt to escrow accounts) amounted to 12.9 billion rubles. As of May 1, the developer is building five residential complexes with a total area of more than 1 million square meters. m. With the timing of delivery, too, everything is fine, realtors say. But the workers at the Donstroy sites are dying with frightening regularity.
On April 29, a 20-year-old worker fell from a height at a facility under construction at 1074 Projected Proyezd (it is at this address that the high-rise buildings of the Ostrov-5 residential complex are being built, where prices for a 29-meter studio start at 18.3 million rubles). He died on the spot, the Khoroshevskaya inter-district prosecutor’s office said, an investigation has been launched into the incident.
“The prosecutor’s office controls the establishment of all the circumstances and causes of the incident, including those responsible for labor protection and safety, and also ensures the legality of the adoption by the investigating authority of the relevant procedural decisions based on the results of the procedural verification,” the department added.
Work on the construction site continues at full speed as if nothing had happened.
At the scene
Our correspondent visited Proektiruemyiy proezd 1074. The journalist was not allowed to enter the construction site itself – it is not allowed, “outsiders are not allowed to enter.” But there are a few things to consider and find out.
The construction is really grandiose: you leave the Terekhovo metro station – and here it is, in front of you and around you. The projected passage 1074 and adjacent built-up passages abut Nizhniye Mnevniki Street, behind which the construction continues. Soon a new elite residential area will grow here with views of the forest and the river. How many more workers will pay with their lives for its appearance?
Builders work in orange vests and helmets. Outdoor workers, in addition, are dressed in safety belts. Although this may well be an attempt to “make a good face on a bad game. How do they work without prosecutorial attention? Who knows, he, most likely, will not tell.
And besides the metro station, a construction site and a forest park, there is nothing else here yet. However, we managed to find a small stall with simple food for the workers. They come here from time to time to have a bite, almost all of the faces are of a pronounced Central Asian appearance. Communicate reluctantly, answer questions in monosyllables. And many of those with whom the journalist tried to talk can’t really connect two words in Russian, even if they would like to talk. At least send them to intelligence – they will not give out secrets.
There were several people more sociable, Russian-speaking. They said that, they say, they pay little for work at an elite construction site, and when asked about living conditions, they answered that they could not let them into change houses, since they are located on the very territory of the construction site, but “it is clear that this is not a resort”, and showed a dry closet, strongly reminiscent of the institution “toilet like me and jo” with its filthiness. It must be assumed that the Central Asian “valuable specialists in the construction industry” are unpretentious people, but so much so … At the same time, as soon as the tragic incident was discussed, the workers instantly seemed to take water in their mouths – “we haven’t been, we haven’t seen, we don’t know, and in general we not from this building. It seems that the company’s management has strictly forbidden to discuss this topic.
Based on what he saw and heard, the following conclusions arise. The developer, quite likely, saves on everything that is possible (and judging by the deaths of workers, and on what it is impossible too), while the exorbitant cost per square meter of housing does not affect the wages of builders in any way. For example: the salary of an installer working full-time on a rotational basis starts from 65 thousand rubles a month – for Moscow the amount is more than modest, but shift workers from the regions and neighboring countries are clearly happy about this. And the leadership of “Donstroy” (or, at least, the head of the facility) could indeed forbid employees to discuss the tragic death of their comrade. I wonder what conclusions the prosecutor’s check will draw.
frightening regularity
In March alone, DonStroy became the scandalous hero of our publications three times. So, on March 4, at the construction site of the multifunctional LCD business class “Event-4”, the collapse of scaffolding occurred on an area of 300 sq.m. One person died and two were hospitalized.
Then, on March 13, on the stretch between the BKL stations “Michurinskiy Prospekt” and “Aminevskaya”, clay and sand were released on the way of trains. It turned out that on this site (and in this place three residential complexes are being built at once – “Lights”, “Event”, “River”) “DonStroy” carried out drilling work that was not coordinated with the Moscow Metro. As a result, there was damage to the metro tunnel, a two-hour stoppage of traffic along the inner side of the BKL and an extra headache for the authorities of the metropolis, who had to quickly solve the problem that arose through the fault of the developer.
The next incident happened already on March 18: about 50 workers from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan got into a fight at the construction site of the Ostrov residential complex, not sharing the time for visiting the canteen. As a result, some participants in the mass brawl ended up in the hospital, while others were in the police.
And it seems that the company’s management does not draw any conclusions from the emergencies occurring one after another. Unless, of course, you count visible attempts to hush up problems or attribute them to contractors, and report on duty that “everything is going according to plan.”
Behind the curtain of luxury
The DonStroy company has been known in Russia since the 1990s. It was founded by Dmitry Zelenov and Maxim Blazhko in 1994 with an eye to the elite real estate segments. The developer’s portfolio includes such projects as “Scarlet Sails”, “House on Mosfilmovskaya”, “Triumph-Palace”, Schuka shopping mall, Nordstar Tower business center. However, scandals seem to accompany the company’s activities all this time. What is the story of the “Scarlet Sails” alone, where a woman crashed to death in an elevator shaft. Apparently, the price of housing and the quality of construction at Donstroy are not too interconnected.
There are a lot of questions to the company’s management about working methods: the ratio of price and quality of housing being built, the abundance of migrants at construction sites and savings at the cost of the lives of workers, the attitude towards their own customers – buyers of expensive apartments, and so on. But it is not clear to whom to ask these questions: the final beneficiaries prefer to remain in the shadows. There is an assumption that the state-owned VTB Bank, which lends to DonStroy, also owns it. But even in this case, it is not clear what is the interest of the state to support a loss-making developer, and how long will this state of affairs last?