Novaya Gollandia, aka New Holland, is an urban regeneration project in St Petersburg.

It’s a triangular island in the Neva canal system and it isn’t the first time its had a prosperity purpose. Peter the Great was the driving force behind St. Petersburg’s canals and shipbuilding industry, bringing many new ideas from Holland where he studied.

Peter, however, didn’t have a credit crunch to contend with. The island’s new developer is a cash-strapped oligarch finding a shortage of investors. The estimated £300 million is looking more like $800 million and completion has already been put back two years.

The winning design for Novaya Gollandia came from Britain’s Norman Foster. Norman Foster also bagged the contract for Moscow’s Crystal Island, but the proposed world’s biggest building is equally beset by the world’s biggest economic crisis. Both projects were designed as ‘mixed use’ sites with plenty of culture, exhibition halls, theatres and plazas. Or as someone put it, ‘one helluvah party zone’. Problem is, the party’s over for the time being.

I have an idea, though, that this is good news for conservationists. Novaya Gollandia was the work of famous 18th century architects. The distinctive redbrick warehouses, built to store ship timber, were commissioned by the Russian Admiralty in 1765.

The archway leading to the inner basin, with its columns of red Tuscan granite, was created by Jean-Baptiste Michel Vallin de la Mothe , who had a hand in the Hermitage. According to Semyon Mikhailovsky, historian at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, ‘Classicism came through this triumphal arch to Petersburg.’

Yes sure, the whole area is a bit run down at the moment since the island fell into disuse under military ownership. But wandering around here, you can question whether malls and mirror glass are entirely appropriate.

There’s much debate about whether Russia’s historic cities have been renewed or trashed by the construction boom. By chance I discovered that Novaya Gollandia’s developer took part in a 2006 debate with ABC. The transcript is here.

He’s all for cranes and bulldozers of course. Now they might be a long time coming.