Kirill Bezrukov (@KBezrukov) pointed me to this beautiful example of savvy business in Kaliningrad.

There’s a bridge (Vysokiy Most, or High Bridge) that connects the main parts of Kaliningrad to Oktyabrskiy Ostrov, a quirky, mostly undeveloped island in the middle of the city. Among other things, the city’s World Cup development agenda involves transforming this island into a viable part of the city. So the new 35,000 seat World Cup stadium is sited there, and other developments are slated to follow. The idea is to use the stadium as an anchor for development, harnessing World Cup attention and investment to push through long-stalled development ideas. We’re seeing a similar pattern in Rostov, incidentally, where authorities have sited the World Cup stadium on the relatively undeveloped side of the river in a bid to expand the city.

Google maps overview of Kaliningrad, Oktyabrskiy Island, and the amazing bridge

The tiny star in the map above indicates Vysokiy Most, which has been reconstructed as part of the World Cup preparations. After all, it’s one of the four main routes to the island. The official cost was about a billion rubles, say around USD 17 million. Not cheap.

The decorative cast iron bases of the lampposts, though? Turns out they got them pretty cheap…