St. Petersburg yachtsmen wrote a petition to the President, Prime Minister and Governor of St. Petersburg demanding to save the St. Petersburg River Yacht Club.
The Leningrad Federation of Trade Unions, which owns the territory of the yacht club, plans to reconstruct it with a private investor. According to the reconstruction project a church and a stele with a monument to St. Vladimir will be built on Petrovskaya Spit, where the yacht club is situated. A hotel with 240 rooms, a SPA-center, an archery field and a martial arts center will appear on the territory of the yacht club. The investor is LLC «Ecoholding».
The project presupposes preservation of the central building of the yacht club. The restaurant will remain there, the administration will be relocated to a new building and a children's yachting school will be located in the vacated area. The project also envisages construction of a boathouse and yacht storage with transformable roof.
According to the yachtsmen's opinion the project lacks a lot of necessary infrastructure elements for yachting. For example there is no crane, mast boathouse, slip, place for the yacht service and workshops. Besides, the yachtsmen fear that in the process of approving the project the investor could change it and as a result the club would be under the threat of destruction.
St.-Petersburg River Yacht Club is the oldest yacht club in Russia founded in 1860. Today the yacht club hosts more than a hundred sailing yachts of different owners and almost the same number of centerboards, two children sailing schools, training shipyard NP «Project «Standart», which ensures participation in the international projects Atlantic Challenge and Tall Ships Races.
