The company plans to erect a new residential block on the site within the next year.

Residents of 51 Zanevsky Prospekt have set up an action group that is angry that Matviyenko "makes promises by signing one document and breaks it [the promise] by signing another."

"We have lived here all these years and now they would come and destroy all the trees around here," Leonid Fedotov, a member of the action group said Monday in an interview. "There is a childrens'playground. Where will they play now? And why is this that we have to put up with all the noise of construction?"

"If [City Hall] would give us apartments of an equal value, it would have been fine, but there are rumors they want to relocate us to somewhere in the suburbs," he said. "Why would we want to do that?"

Another resident, who wanted to be identified only by his first name, Kirill, and who said he had experienced the horrors of World War II, looked upset.

Pointing at trees growing along Zanevsky Prospekt, he said: "I remember we planted them in 1965 on Victory Day anniversary and now they want to chop them down."

The action group has a copy of a decree dated May 5 and signed by Matviyenko, that "approves a decision made by the investment and tender commission Dec. 23, 2003 to allow the joint stock company LEK ESTATE to construct a building with additional premises on a plot of land of 10,104 square meters located in the Krasnogvardeisky district."

Meanwhile, the law to protect green areas that came into force at the weekend bans construction in so-called "areas of common use," in other words in parks, gardens and yards next to residential buildings. Any developer who has to chop down trees so that they can start a construction project, must plant the same amount of trees nearby, the law says.

"The law says that the amount of money a company must pay for removing trees cannot be less than the real cost of planting new trees," Greenpeace wrote in a commentary on the law. "Before the law was introduced, the cost was made significantly less, just a few hundred rubles for one mature tree,"

Matviyenko promised during her successful gubernatorial campaign last year to halt construction encroaching on green areas, but Smolny delayed the law for months after it was approved by the Legislative Assembly. In those months, she appears to have given approvals for a lot of construction in green areas.

Matviyenko signed the law May 21 and it came into force Sunday.

Greenpeace said contracts signed before the law was put in force would not be revised because the law is not retroactive.

Meanwhile, a protest over fill-in construction on at 9 Institutsky Prospekt in the Vyborg district stopped traffic Monday after residents blocked the road to make their anger felt.

After weeks of actions against a construction project in their yard and 24-hour patrols organized by residents themselves to prevent construction vehicles from coming into their yard, City Hall gave an order to stop the construction Thursday to cool down a conflict that had raised hackles.

But the next day two construction cranes drove into the yard and installed additional fences around the planned construction site.

"We went there to support the residents," said Andrei Raikov, a member of National Bolshevik Party, who headed the protest in a telephone interview Monday. "We stopped traffic for two hours and demanded that the local authorities show up to explain themselves to residents.

"This situation is very indicative; authorities promise something in words, but in practice they do absolutely the opposite thing," he said. "Nevertheless, we still hope the construction there will be stopped in the end. We believe in that."

Mikhail Amosov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly, said the 9 Institutsky Prospekt case showed City Hall's was ignoring landowners'rights.

"This case appears more difficult than others about green areas being destroyed," Amosov said Monday in a telephone interview.

"There is a rent agreement signed in 1969 between City Hall and the residents for this area, and they have paid taxes for it for many years," he added. "Some outsiders have now come to the residents' land and started building on it.

"I have looked at the residents'documents and I think they are in order. This really puts egg on City Hall's face," he said.

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St Peterburg Times, June 8, 2004