Vitebsk families are preparing to celebrate their first housewarmings in the "Medcenter" microdistrict

May 11, Vitebsk / Sergey Kochetov - BELTA /. Almost 200 Vitebsk families are preparing to celebrate housewarmings in the new "Medtsentr" residential area, where the first two houses have been commissioned. This was reported to a BELTA correspondent by Sergey Nizhnikov, head of the city executive committee's construction department. The microdistrict is currently one of the main housing construction sites in the regional center. The first two 10-story residential buildings are designed for 119 and 79 apartments with a total area of over 10 thousand sq.m. In total, "Medtsentr", which construction workers began in 2008, plans to build about 170 thousand sq.m of housing, or about 30 houses. This year, construction work has begun in another new microdistrict, "Bilevo-2". Here, work is underway to lay the foundations of the first three 40-apartment houses with a total area of about 8 thousand sq.m, and engineering networks and transport communications are being laid at an accelerated pace. In the future, it is planned to build about 200 thousand sq.m of housing in this microdistrict. In addition, in the second half of 2009, engineering development of the "Sokolniki" new individual housing microdistrict will begin. In this microdistrict with a total area of 274 hectares, 1,047 land plots (an average of about 0.15 hectares per plot) will be allocated for housing construction. The first stage of the microdistrict has been defined - one block with an area of about 60 hectares (220 land plots) - for the final design of the facility. This will make it possible to speed up work on laying roads, engineering networks, and other communications. Subsequently, land plots will be distributed starting from the first block of the microdistrict. According to the results of the first four months, about 60 thousand sq.m of housing has been commissioned in Vitebsk. In total, in 2009, it is planned to build over 300 thousand sq.m of residential area in the regional center. -0-