The new 98,000 sq. m Akropole center was built on Maskava Street in Riga on the site of the Kuznetcov porcelain and faience factory, dating from 1841. Old factory elements were used in the interior of the shopping center: yellow bricks, metal columns and ceramic moulds. The center also includes a museum of the former Kuznetcov factory.
The Akropole center houses more than 200 retail stores, cafes, restaurants, the state-of-the-art Apollo cinema with its nine auditoriums − including two restaurant auditoriums − and the first IMAX movie theater in Latvia, as well as the O’Learys entertainment center, a gym, children’s playgrounds and other tenants. Of its total area, 9,000 sq. m are devoted to an office building.
The Akropole center also features an impressive ice arena, whose dimensions conform to ice hockey standards. It is being used for training by the Latvian national ice hockey team. Building the ice arena was a great challenge to our construction team. An area of nearly 8,400 sq. m is covered without the use of columns, using large so-called spatial trusses, which had to be transported to the site by special vehicles with a police escort. Seventy-seven trusses of different sizes were used in covering the ice arena, the largest one 3.5 m high and 23 m long.
The scope of work also included extensive infrastructure and landscaping, supporting the multifunctional center. We reconfigured Maskavas, Slavu and Salaspils streets, built a viaduct from Krasta street and installed more than 2,300 parking spaces. More than 600 trees and 10 other types of vegetation were also planted on the Akropole center site.
Mitnija has had long-term cooperation with Akropolis Group. In 2003-2007, the company built Akropolis shopping centers in Kaunas and Klaipėda, Lithuania, which have a total retail and entertainment area of nearly 160,000 sq. m, as well as an Akropolis office building and the second stage of a shopping center in Vilnius.
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