Japan's Nikken Sekkei to design Ulan Ude overhauled airport

ULAN UDE, May 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Japan's Nikken Sekkei engineering
company will design a project for the overhaul and modernization of the
Baikal international airport in the Russian city of Ulan Ude. The project
will be submitted to the airport's board of directors by August 1, and the
works will start next year.
The new board represents the investment and financial corporation
Metropol, which has bought out 100 percent stake in the airport from
Austria's MAI. The sum of the deal was not made public, although federal
business portals say it might be around five million U.S. dollars, or five
times less than the sum paid by the Austrian to the airport's former
Russian owner.
The new board has agreed the budget of the airport's refurbishment
that will be over by early July, when the republic of Buryatia will mark
the 350th anniversary of its voluntary accession to Russia, the board
chairman, Irek Salimov told a news conference but refused to elaborate on
the exact sum.
According to Bair Tsyrenov, a board member, Metropol bought the
airport with an eye of focusing on encouraging international tourism in
the federal tourism zone Baikalskaya Gavan (Baikal Bay) along Lake Baikal'
s eastern coastline. A number of Metropol's subsidiaries are residents of
this zone. The company is looking at organizing trips to Lake Baikal by
tourists from Japan, so it plans to organize a flight from Tokyo to Ulan
Ude via Ulaan Baator.