The construction of the first complex of the Skolkovo innovation center outside Moscow is scheduled to begin in 2012 and be completed in early 2014, news agency RIA Novosti reports citing a source in the Skolkovo Fund.
Under current plans, the center is to have 850 residential housing units, classrooms for 600 students, as well as to create 1,000 jobs by 2014. The Skolkovo lab-city is reportedly to become the largest site for development and implementation of new technologies for energy-efficiency, transport, information, communication and other areas by project participants.
The project concept presupposes using the newest technologies in the innovation hub itself – engineering technologies such as pneumatic waste processing, use of underground heat sources, use of heat from sewage waters, use of solar panels, biogas and absorption devices. Transportation technologies will be developed as well – the construction of intercepting park and ride facilities at the center, high speed public transport connected to railway transport by interchange terminals, pedestrian and bicycle zones, and carpooling.
The ‘transformer-city’ concept is also to be integrated in planning the Skolkovo territory, meaning that its development is to be subject to future transformation, RIA Novosti mentioned.
