OREANDA-NEWS. On 20 May 2009 was announced, that reconstruction of Moskva Hotel is to be completed in 2011, Vladimir Resin, first deputy Moscow Mayor at City Hall, said on May 12.

The period of reconstruction of Moskva that was initiated in 2003 has been prolonged several times. The hotel was originally scheduled to be commissioned in late 2007, later its opening was postponed till late 2008. However, only offices, commercial areas and garages included in the project were developed by December 2008.

Moskva received the first guests in 1935. It has remained the biggest hotel of the USSR for a long time. The city authorities of Moscow recognized its building as a dangerous structure in 2000 and decided to demolish it and erect a new one with the same outside instead. Moskva was taken down in 2004, development of its substitute was started the year later.

Mr Resin added that implementation of a program aimed at building and overhauling the Moscow hotels would go on.

According to the first deputy mayor, the city authorities have approved the ivestment program that provides for developing 289 hotels to accommodate 76,000 guests altogether in Moscow in 10 years to come.

The official added that 21 hotels were to be erected in the Russian capital in 2009, 6 of them had already been completed.