The Administration of the Central District of St. Petersburg inspected the premises of our client, which is located in a house recognized as an object of cultural heritage. The client’s premises were used to provide catering services, with part of the space occupied by a kitchen whose windows overlooked a classic St. Petersburg courtyard well. In the windows of the room, metal-plastic louvre lattices have been installed for a long time, which the representatives of the district administration did not like. Given that the lattices were deemed to detract from the appearance of the house, the majority of whose windows were glass-filled, the Administration issued a prescription to the client requiring the dismantling of the grids and their replacement with glass.
The client began to appeal to various authorities and try to obtain the necessary coordination, but the process was delayed, the period established in the prescription expired. Meanwhile, the administration appealed to the court to bring the house to the proper condition by ordering the dismantling of the metal-plastic louvre. The Dzerzhinsky District Court recognized these requirements as justified.
We appealed to the St. Petersburg City Court, which overturned the decision of the court of first instance in full, supported our argument that the control powers of the Administration in the field of landscaping are residual in nature, apply only to land plots owned by St. Petersburg or to plots whose ownership has not been delimited, and only on the condition that the objects on the site are not subordinate to other state bodies. The land plot under the house where the client’s premises are located is in the common shared ownership of the house, and the control over the preservation and appearance of the house, which is an object of cultural heritage, is under the exclusive competence of the KGIOP.
Refusing to satisfy the claims, the appellate court stated that the Administration is not entitled to act in the interests of the owners of the house in which the premises are located and to declare the unauthorized placement of landscaping elements on the common property; moreover, window openings and their fillings that serve only one room in the house cannot be attributed to the common property.
Over time, the client nevertheless managed to obtain approval for the existing structures of window fillings; why this litigation was needed by the Administration during the approval period remained a mystery to us and the client.
