The historical building of the Russian Technical Society on Knyazheskaya 1a, known by Odessa residents as the Masonic House, is planned to be restored to locate a hotel inside.
The draft project "repair and restoration work with adaptation to modern needs" will be considered at a meeting of the Advisory Council for the Protection of Cultural Heritage at the Regional State Administration, which will take place on July 2. The project was defined by the architect Alexander Gorbachev.
This masterpiece of architects Alessandro Bernardazzi and Eduard Mesner, erected in 1887-1892, collapsed in 2016 due to lack of maintenance and administrative obstacles to start up a programme of restructuring.
The building has been in disrepair for the last decades. In August 2015, the Odessa Regional Council sold the house at an auction to the Art Building Group company (member of Incor-group owned by the Ukrainian builder of Ruslan Tarpan) for UAH 1.6 million. The latter undertook to restore the monument in its authentic form and wanted to place its head office there.
However, the restoration never started up. After the appointment of Mikhail Saakashvili as governor, the regional administration for the protection of monuments refused to sign a protection agreement, without which it is impossible to complete any purchase and sale agreement. The firm sued the Regional State Administration, but lost in all instances.
On December 8, 2017, the ruins of the Masonic House were acquired at a new auction, by the Odesabud company (owned by Kislovsky family), for a price of 1 million 114 thousand hryvnia for it. At the same time, Andrey Kislovsky announced ambitious plans to restore the architectural monument and add the attic floor, with the purpose to locate a hotel in the building, but works have not started yet.
