KRASNOYARSK, September 23. /TASS/. A municipal health center in Norilsk will be built in 2024-2025 under a large-scale housing renovation program, Nornickel’s press service said, adding investments in the project will make 2 billion rubles ($27 million).

On Wednesday, September 22, the Norilsk Development Project Office, which was organized in spring, presented two first renovation projects - the construction of a health center and the renovation of secondary school number 4.

"The health center will be more than 11,000 square meters," the release reads. "It will be a six-storey building with departments for adults and for kids, with part-time adult and children's hospitals, women's health department, a diagnostic laboratory, as well as stomatology and X-ray departments. The clinic will have the most up-to-date equipment. Nornickel will invest more than 2 billion rubles in the construction."

Investments in the secondary school renovation will make 1.2 billion rubles ($16 million). Instead of two old buildings the school for 650 students will have two modern buildings connected with a covered gallery. A five-storey building will house classrooms, linguistic classrooms, an elementary school with bedrooms for children, a food hall for 300 students, a gym and a library; one floor will be made for engineering equipment. The school facade will be a replica of the historical building with architectural lighting. In addition to the health center construction and the secondary school renovation, in the coming years, Norilsk will continue to dismantle the emergency housing stock and will begin projects to build multi-storey residential buildings, the Arctic Museum of Modern Art, will renovate the Polar State University and will build another modern secondary school for 1,100 students.

About Norilsk renovation

Norilsk is one of the northernmost cities in the world. It is home to 180,000 people, 26% of whom are employed with the Norilsk Nickel Company. Mass construction in Norilsk was in the 1940s-1950s and in the 1960s-1990s. Presently, the city does not have new construction projects. Norilsk, including the remote village of Snezhnogorsk, has 862 residential buildings.

Every year, at least one or two buildings in the city are put on the list of emergency houses. Most houses, built in the Soviet times, are 40-50 years old, while their life terms were just 25-30 years.

In February 2021, Russia’s Ministry of Regional Development, the Norilsk Nickel Company (Nornickel), the Krasnoyarsk Region’s government and Norilsk’s city administration entered an agreement on Norilsk’s socio-economic development. The document provides for renovation of the housing stock, upgrade and overhaul of the city’s municipal and engineering infrastructures, construction, reconstruction and development of social infrastructure facilities, formation of a comfortable and safe urban environment, as well as relocation of residents from Norilsk and Dudinka to areas with more favorable conditions.

The joint financing of Norilsk’s development to 2024 and further on to 2035 will make 120.1 billion rubles ($1.6 billion), where 24 billion rubles ($328 million) will come from the federal budget, 14.8 billion rubles ($202 million) - from the Krasnoyarsk Region’s budget, and 81.3 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) - from Nornickel.