Back in 1982, the Norilsk executive committee allocated a land plot in Oganer (a part of the Big Norilsk) for the construction of a 1000-bed hospital. At the expense of the combine, foreign currency financing was got and the international competition for the implementation of the project was announced, where Finnish and Yugoslavian construction firms participated among others. The competition was won by the construction company “Monter” from Yugoslavia, or rather, from Croatia, which was part of the state. The “yugs” already had a successful construction of new buildings for the Zapolyarye sanatorium in Sochi.
The specialists of the civil engineering department of the Norilskproekt institute also started working with the “Monter” – both at the design stage and at the construction one. As for the project of the underground phase, engineering support of the facilities, solving issues of the general plan and landscaping, all that work was carried out by our project institute.
In 1988, the representatives of the general contractor and the Norilsk combine signed a contract on joint construction, and the filling of the site began. The first wells for the piles of the future hospital Fundamentstroy drilled in October 1988. In January 1989, Rudshakhtstroy took up the zero cycle.
On June 23, 1989, Yugoslav builders accepted the first concrete for the construction. The next day, the Norilsk and foreign specialists together laid a metal capsule with the construction passport of the object in the concrete base of the building, wishing that it would never be found. This became the starting point for concreting the hospital frame.
According to the contract, the commissioning of the hospital was scheduled for November 1991. But the situation in the countries – both in the USSR and in Yugoslavia – was not easy. As a result, the grand opening with the symbolic key transfer from the builders to the doctors took place only on June 7, 1993. Croatian Ambassador to Russia Niko Bezmalinovic and 32 foreign guests flew to Norilsk for the hospital opening ceremony. But the patients from the hospital campus moved to the new building in December 1994.
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Text: Svetlana Samokhina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
