A resident of Tomsk is building a mansion in the water tower Bashny.Net

Meet 31-year-old resident of Tomsk enterprising Alexander Lunev. Man persuaded local officials to sell him an abandoned water tower and decided to equip it under the house. Details of the truly great project, see under the cut.




It all started in 2013?
In 2012. In April 2012, a colleague showed me the site of Tomsk mayor's office that rented non-residential building.
Why the mayor's office began to hand over all non-residential buildings?
Maybe in Moscow is less common or less lights on the audience, but each city belongs to the municipality of a large number of real estate. It is clear that part of the property the municipality itself uses, but part of it is trying to make a profit, sometimes privatizing property, sometimes renting. If in Moscow to look likely, too, there is something like "the Moscow mayor's office offers».
Promotions from the Moscow City Hall.
Sort of, yes. I was given a link - then we thought that we would have to look for some kind of real estate, and it was thought that the municipal facilities can be rented cheaply.
Why do you need property was?
We - the office in which I work - to think about how to change the location, move to another, and watched what a Tomsk commercial real estate market, it is non-residential facilities. Colleague dropped a link that here, it seems to the room, and it seems, is a tower. I walked, read, there were photographs of nothing is clear. It is not far from the place where I lived the first 20 years of his life, just 10 minutes' walk away. I saw this tower, have all seen it.
Who will have a small dip in the Tomsk realities do: there is such an area South, is one of the famous squares in the city, it is close to the stadium "Petrel", where people are now constantly tusit, relax and have fun in a sports sense of the word, and there is, the road to our local river Tom. There precipitous beautiful beach where you can walk down to the water, grove, people are constantly walking, barbecues, beer and stuff. And there many times and walked passed this old water tower. Somehow I was always sure that she's someone in the private ownership. I cast link, and it turned out that the tower owned by City Hall, and City Hall does not know what to do with it - because it passed, it turns out, for the past seven years. Before that there cheburechniki sell their pasties and kebabs.
That you recently found?
Yes, recently I found a wonderful document-claim. Here, cheburechniki lost somewhere in the beginning of the two thousandth. The building stood restless, and the mayor's office just recently started trying to pass it at least rent.
Alexander: "On a photo a license to work in catering. Issued in '94 ECP "Blue Light" and allows trading barbecue and chebureks. For a license paid 51,250 rubles! »



The tower itself, supporting structures, these walls were normal box, wooden ceiling collapsed, the roof began to fall, no communications, no electricity, plus a number of City Hall legalized Attached barns - it could not carry them, and these buildings magically turned into capital building. And the mayor's office all this stuff trying to rent out for about the price of 20-30 thousand per month. In principle, for such a fucking building is quite a bit - but in what condition it was!
"Now, unmade nothing doing only engineering issues creating overlaps, already spent, except for the cost of the tower, more than two million rubles. The tower, with these rotten porches and a tiny plot of land, managed in half. "
Municipality hoping it's all rent and the tenant had to invest a huge amount of their money in a rental unit that at least something out of it.
He could not use it in theory, under the contract, or there was any need to invest in repairs?
You know, something to do with the building must be at least some conditions. In the form in which the tower lease, there is nothing to do it was impossible. Only, perhaps as a warehouse used - and that, given that the roof and no heat flowed what it nafig warehouse. It turns out that no one wanted to rent a building on these conditions because we had a lot of their money to invest, invest and hire - well, somehow meaningless.
I also realized it, but immediately understood and that furiously, fiercely frantically want this building to the property itself. And eight months spent to ensure that the ownership of the building to get. At the end of 2012 - beginning of 2013 got my hands on the auction results and the certificate of ownership.
There's someone else involved in this auction?
No, it was organized by my own, and I even had to organize this second virtual party, because if one party submits to the auction, the auction is declared invalid.
What a fierce desire? I read what you compare it with the "Draft" Lukyanenko?
It forced comparison, actually. "Draft" Lukyanenko I've read, of course, before I learned about the tower. I, like many children growing up in the Soviet Union, would like to see housing was somehow unusual. We have a child all built huts.



There is such an American dream - a house on a tree.
Yes, I have it all perfectly understand and share the things I wanted, I had some strange place where I live. And something more unusual in Tomsk was impossible to come up with.
In terms of price and quality?
Honestly I tell you, efficient in the purchase and throughout this project, almost none. I have very little chance of eventually scrape the situation. A month later, I got a situation that all the money run out of credit and loans to pay for nothing. Now I hope to run a site that maybe even give an additional impetus in the form of crowdfunding to any financial inflow to receive - but some rational principle and the plan in all of this is almost no.
I understand you. My brother bought a plot of almost a hectare near Voronezh with apple orchard: he put to Tuyev Khuchua money, and, in my opinion, not going to beat them.
Shiloh in the ass and a big dream of some people make life very difficult.
And about crowdfunding, I saw on Lepre some guys on his own initiative created the post and called the purse chip in.
Yes, and it is absolutely awesome.
There are already some tangible support from the community of leprosy?
I was engaged in a tower from the beginning of '13, I changed the roof last summer and conducted communications, and all this little, wrote in his LiveJournal. In Tomsk people about my age already knew that there was such a crazy city. I worked 10 years on the radio host, I have something on my birthday girls organized a hundred of giant balloons with helium, which we dragged through the city - and someone knows about it, friends know that I'm crazy. And attention was, but such parochial.
In the winter of last year I crashed in the tower, injured his leg, was at home, and one of the friends asked, "What did you post on Leprosy can not write?" I wrote three days post leprosy. First footcloth - it really awesome. Written, I waited on Monday to the weekend not to post, skopipastil all this, pressed YARRR - and the terrible thing, the first 10 minutes nothing happens, no pros or cons, he gradually falls.
All you read?
Yes, I then realized that no one could not take it and read instantly. I sit and think - damn it, wrote some garbage nobody cares. Right now more minusanut, she goes somewhere, and there is also removed. And then it started - an incredible, powerful response that not only in Lepre spawned a reaction, but also very much spilled beyond leprosy in the Internet and from the Internet to the media.
I saw the story on the First Channel.
Yes, after a week I already wrote about Rustem Adagamov at Twitter and Lukyanenko me in my LJ wishes good luck to the construction site, two weeks later I get a call from Tomsk journalists and asks: "Alexander, and you some tower do? We call Moscow and ask some footage about the famous tower of Tomsk, and we do not know it. "



The waves were huge, I do nothing ask, but people from the heart begins to me first on the Kiwi-purse, and then fold the card to loot. I complained, for example, that the metal beams are expensive, and to me for two or three weeks have thrown 70 thousand rubles. At first I protested, saying - let me will take a symbolic interest, if you will leave your details. People do not care, converted from 50 rubles to 5000 rubles, simply because they like the idea. The post became the zaplyusovannym history of leprosy, and I realized that many people are willing to help and empathize.
From that moment I was thinking what to do site. But since I've never been strong in strategic affairs and usually resolve tactical issues, I always think that we should do a site, and it lasts for several months. I am familiar with in one evening launched the template into WordPress, I have to filled fotochki, some texts - and that's to make the store, it is necessary to zamorochitsya come up with the goods account in the payment system, the account to connect.
Why do you need a store?
I am ashamed to take money from people just like that. There are sick kids, there infirm elderly who really need help, they alone can not cope, and they are not to blame for what happened to them. And I alone funny stupid ass that made me such a life, and I am ashamed to just take the money.
I have thought that it would be more fair if I invite people to buy some souvenirs, T-shirts, magnets, pieces of I-beams with a brand, something else. Part of the money will go to the state, part of the payment system, and some I did spend the tower. And they say that, yes, it would be nice if you did such a topic. And I still hope that in the next two or three weeks, suddenly crept up on vacation, I'll run the system, because in May, I'll stay with bare ass and does not know what to do.
You think you can on one single site to run this campaign effectively? I see that you continue to publish "VKontakte" posts pictures to Instagram, you write posts in LJ, and you have three posts on leprosy, that there is going to a huge number of advantages - it may be wise to use it all?
I began to write, including even Facebook, which scares me, so that more people found out about this topic. I am always so pleased when journalists come. In fact, on the one hand, it is interesting to people, on the other hand, I hope that my crazy plan still vygrebet the surface. Site tomsktower.ru there now and for those who are not sitting on leprosy, but interested, I'm there every day spread stories with photos of what I'm doing on the tower. There's no more of the store, but you can tell people that there is such an address.



You somehow helped the city administration? It changes the attitude to power?
Yes, when I started and ran with a burning ass: "Tower, Tower, Tower!" All friends I say, "Are you the same officials nifiga they do not need." I myself constantly see examples of completely inefficient disposal some public resources, and at the city level and at the regional level. I'm not saying that all officials - unscrupulous thieves, but the system is not effective due to the fact that people are absolutely not interested in the results of their labor.
Many times I came across this in an attempt to arrange the tower. To the extent that one person in the town hall told me, "Well, you go, well, why do you have to think, you're a hero? You just create us a headache. " I said, "Guys, what a headache? The building is a monument and may soon fall apart from time and the fact that he had not been taking care not to make repairs. " And the man said to me: "If it falls apart, it will not be our problem."
And I very much this attitude seen, but at the same time there are other people who are really in the best of their ability - and the normal powers who have little - help. And I was very lucky with Ratner (the deputy chief of the Department of Economic Development of Tomsk Michael Ratner - approx.), Which he imbued with this idea, propihnul the matter to the finance department and the meetings of the City Duma.

"I thought everything should be just and fair - destroyed a building that is a monument, I come in on a white horse and offer it to recover, I give free building, and subsidies to help with money, materials and anything else - dick. "
Eight months were spent trying to get me transferred at market value as property, and then another security obligations and the control of the mayor's office, police from the area. And now I come up against the difficulties created by the mayor's office - cheburechniki sheds built illegally, the mayor's office for a long time hung a sign that the construction is illegal, then they were gone, the mayor's office did not find the money for the bulldozer, and Sarai capital building. The fact that they are in the zone of protection of monuments in the area of ​​health meteorological station nearby, on top of the city's sewerage - this did not care.
Then the building was sold to me, is all I find out, I come to the town hall and say - guys at one time you did something just such garbage, let's try to fix it. But officials do not want to acknowledge a mistake and say it is not their competence, monuments - this is the competence of the regional department of culture. Regional Department of Culture opens wide his eyes and says, "Wait, the monument is the tower, which sheds some drainage? Go away! "And I am in a legal gap where no one wants to do.
This is an example of such an attitude, common among bureaucrats percent on 90. But I was very lucky that among the people I met there by representatives of the other ten percent, that really helped me a lot.
The tower is a monument, and you have an obligation to reconstructing. From you something else is needed? Led excursions?
Formally, the state requires from the owner of the monument following things: firstly, it must be restored, if it was destroyed by the time, and secondly, it must be kept in a certain mode. Since in my case it is a feature of the monument to its appearance, which means that in coordination with the State Commission and the Department of Culture, I am preparing a plan to bring in the outer part of the historical line - looked like a tower in the construction in 1895.
I provide the use of appropriate materials guarantee that I will not in any way disturb the appearance of the tower (it is still called the restoration), and at the same time I make reconstruction and adaptation. It's all internal stuff: broken on the floors, stairs installation, wiring communications, the fact that I do want to live there.
Formally, making it going through all the steps specified, I become white and fluffy, and the state of me does not require anything more. There's only brought in more security commitments that the Department of Culture has the right to inspect the monument - and everything.
That is, just check how good you are containing it.
Well yes. They by and large do not care as long as I did not demolish or sawed into pieces the upper part of the tower. We Tomsk was a major scandal when another major regional monument night just took and demolished it to a place attached to a neighboring construction site and increase the building area. There was a scandal, because all ran, but very certainly not found.



I, on the one hand, began to engage in a tower, very strongly imbued with this whole topic.
Consistency?
Lord, forgive me, life just would not see this! I mean the history of the building.
It was built approximately in 1895. It was built by railroad engineers. They did not have our modern materials: for example, a solution was still inferior, limestone. They are, without a steep technology, invested a large amount of manual labor: bricks hews manually fit and upstairs too manually. All the wooden part was fitted with axes, all obshivochku also planed planes, doing painting.
I look at all this in the process of restoration. You know, the old staircase: welding did not exist, it collected on forged rivets. I sawed it apart and find that it is attached to the wall mortgages details such huge - also forged. It is unfortunate the window at the bottom - not just window: through it passed the tube through which ran the locomotives.
And I suddenly realize that I'm very much imbued with all this. I probably feel like time itself, the harsh bearded engineers who are at the end of the XIX century did it all with their hands and on their humps hauled bricks. Yes. Wow.