#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. At that time, the government decree on the further development of the Norilsk combine included the design of a thousand-bed hospital. However, designing does not mean building: 25 years passed before its completion in 1993.
The project for the current hospital in Oganer had at least three predecessors. But the first project turned out to be too expensive, and the next one became outdated while it was going through the authorities. Only in the early 1980s, along with the planned Oganer district, the issue of the hospital was resolved. In 1982, the executive committee allocated a land plot of 13 hectares in the Oganer district for the construction of a thousand-bed hospital. The combine earned money to secure foreign currency financing and announce an international tender for the project. Finnish and Yugoslav construction companies participated in it.
The tender was won by the construction company Monter from Yugoslavia, or more precisely from Croatia, which was part of that state at that time. It already had successful construction of new buildings for the Sochi health rezort Zapolyarye. Together with Monter, specialists from the civil engineering department of the Norilskproekt institute began work – both at the design stage and at the construction stage. As for the zero cycle project, engineering support for facilities, solutions to general plan issues and landscaping, all this work was carried out at our institute.
It was supposed to build not just a hospital in Oganer, but an entire hospital town – sites for an infectious diseases hospital, a polyclinic and a maternity hospital were designed nearby. And it was also planned to lay a direct route from the hospital to the city center. However, when the combine accepted the project, a lot was cut. In 1988, representatives of the general contractor and the Norilsk combine signed a contract for joint construction, and the site was filled. Fundamentstroy drilled the first holes for the piles of the future Oganer hospital in October 1988. In January 1989, Rudshakhtstroy began the zero cycle. On June 23, 1989, Yugoslav builders accepted the first concrete for the construction of the building. And on June 24, Norilsk and visiting specialists together laid a metal capsule with the construction passport of the facility, the issues of the Zapolyarnaya Pravda and Norilsk Stroitel local newspapers in the concrete foundation of the building and wished that it would never be found. This became the starting point for concreting the hospital frame.
According to the contract, the hospital was scheduled for delivery in November 1991. But the situation in both countries – the USSR and Yugoslavia – was not easy. In 1991, the USSR ceased to exist, and four of the six republics of Yugoslavia separated, including Croatia, where Monter was from.
The advantages of the Yugoslav version include compact development, placement of all hospital departments in one large building, and a successful planning solution. For the first time in Norilsk, hospital wards were designed not according to a corridor scheme, but according to a block scheme. One such block includes two double wards, a common vestibule, a bathroom, a shower, and a washbasin. Fifteen floors are connected by twelve different-sized elevators. The width of the corridors allows two gurneys to pass each other at the same time. The hospital has two technological floors, its own boiler room, and 50 kilometers of conduit.
At 4 p.m. on June 7, 1993, the grand opening took place with the transfer of a symbolic key from the builders to the doctors. The red ribbon at the main entrance, covered with Russian and Croatian flags, was cut by the combine director Anatoly Filatov. 32 foreign guests arrived for the hospital opening, headed by Niko Bezmalinović, the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Croatia to Russia. The first director of the Monter company, Milan Mandić (in 1988, he signed a contract with the director of the plant of those years, Boris Kolesnikov), the current general director Zolić, as well as the director of the Monter hospital project, Stevan Major, also came.
Despite the grand opening, the hospital was officially accepted for operation only a year later: the corresponding order was signed by the general director of the plant on July 29, 1994. And the patients from the hospital campus moved to the new building in December 1994.
In the previous History Spot’s publication, we told how Oganer was built.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Olga Zaderyaka, Norilsk residents and Nornickel Polar Division’s archives
