Pile foundations have been completed for the 463-meter Lakhta Center in St. Petersburg, Russia. The last pile under the foundation was produced on June 17, 2014, and the project is on schedule, developers say. In total there are 2,080 piles of various diameters and depths in the foundations of the complex. All the piles are bored. Two hundred sixty-four piles 2 meters in diameter support the tower, 848 piles of 1.2 meters' diameter support the multifunctional building and entrance arch, and 968 piles of 600 millimeters support the underground car park. The behavior of the piles will be monitored by sensors, which will record information during the entire period of construction and operation of the complex.

Construction of Gazprom's 463-meter tall "Lakhta Center" in St. Petersburg will begin in October, the head of the Gazprom subsidiary in charge of the project said to information agency RIA Novosti. Gazprom received permission from the city to build the skyscraper complex on the shore of the Gulf of Finland earlier in August. The site is ten kilometers from the city center. An earlier proposal to build in downtown St. Petersburg, at Okhta Cape, had to be scrapped in the face of stiff public opposition. "Construction will proceed in phases," said Alexander Bobkov, the head of ZAO Okhta Public and Business Center, which is overseeing construction of the complex. "The tower itself will take the longest to build. I think we will break ground in October, since there are no legal or technical issues," Bobkov said. The 334 thousand square meter complex will serve as the headquarters for Gazprom's oil arm, Gazprom Neft, and other Gazprom subsidiaries. Construction is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2018. Bobkov did not specify the overall price tag for the project, but said one square meter is expected to cost US$ 2,5 - 3,5 thousand, much less than the estimated US$ 1.9 billion to build at the Okhta site.

St. Petersburg's construction and architecture committee permitted the state-controlled Gazprom gas giant to build a skyscraper on the Gulf of Finland, the company's public and business center said on Friday. Gazprom owns a plot of land in the area and plans to build a 470-meter tall office and an entire business center, Lakhta Center, nine kilometers to the north of the city center. In mid July, a lower commission for land and construction recommended that the project be allowed. The official limit for buildings in the area is 27 meters tall but the architecture committee said the limit would be extended to 500 meters for the Gazprom project. The new Lakhta Center project will be built on an area of 140 thousand square meters by 2018, and is designed to be a self-sufficient mini-town outside the St. Petersburg residential area. The offices of the Gazprom Neft company, the oil arm of Gazprom, and other Gazprom subsidiaries will be at the center of the project. Earlier, Gazprom wanted to build Okhta Center with a 400-meter tall skyscraper on the Okhtinskaya Cape in central St. Petersburg. The decision caused protests from community and the company withdrew the project late last year and sold the plot of land.