1 · Position
Ninety hectares on the Moscow ring road at Krasnogorsk, holding retail, exhibition, business and entertainment space under one architectural scheme. Aras Agalarov built Crocus City Hall for 70 million dollars — a third of it borrowed — and opened it on 25 October 2009, with movable tiers and partitions so the room could be reset between a chamber theatre production, a rock concert and a sports event. It was named for Muslim Magomayev, a close friend; the two men were both born in Baku.
2 · ⚑ Why it is in the Library
Agalarov also paid for the metro. Myakinino station stands on the complex's own land and cost 30 million dollars, funded by the developer and opened at the end of 2009. It is the only case in this Library of a private owner building public transport infrastructure to serve his own building. Every district in this group waits for the state to connect it — Canary Wharf waited a decade for the Jubilee line. Here the developer did not wait.
3 · ⚑ 22 March 2024
A terrorist attack and a subsequent fire at Crocus City Hall killed and injured a large number of people, and the hall has not operated since. The Library states this because a register that describes a building must describe what happened in it, and because the entry would be dishonest without it. It does not attempt an account of the attack, its investigation, or the disputes surrounding it: those are outside what a hospitality register can establish, and this entry does not pretend otherwise.
4 · Candour
Crocus Group's wider business, its state contracts and its owner's political connections are documented elsewhere and are not assessed here. ⚑ Aras Agalarov is not in Part IX or in Capital; on the Library's own test — a private owner who built a metro station — he is a candidate for both, and the anchor now exists.