Giving a little bit more reaps rewards for Bullock

Real Estate Weekly, May 16, 2007 by Danielle Wolffe

Janna Bullock has always had a knack for timing.

The artistically inclined developer left her home country of Russia for New York in the early 1990's--when she realized the closed market would prevent her from getting any further than the soap and bread vouchers she held in her hand would allow--and returned when the market had just begun to open back up.

Armed with an MBA from Duke University, a $100,000 investment from an American friend, a brief history of doing restoration projects for friends, and a few good architects, Bullock revisited Russia and stumbled on the fallen city of Sergei Posad. Walking the streets, she noticed both the lack of telephone lines and the possibilities in one of the few collections of pre 19th century churches still standing in the country and within the majestic monastery walls

"There was no infrastructure in the city at all. People didn't have any place to eat, wash their hands, buy a sandwich. At the same time, it was so beautiful and rich with history," Bullock said. "I built up a plan that would be my project for the rest of my life, to bring this beautiful, but totally abandoned city, back to life," Bullock said.

She formed the RI Group in Moscow shortly thereafter, hedging her bets on the ripeness of the region. Though city and local politics hampered the start of six of the eight project ideas for Sergei Posad, the two projects she was able to complete--a flea market overlooking the famous monastery and a shopping center which used to be a former stadium, helped her to realize her dreams. The flea market brought residents teeming into the stalls on opening day and eventually became a huge tourist attraction. The shopping center's success caused her to create a package of similar centers in small cities and suburbs outside of Moscow which were ultimately branded "The Happy Family" and tapped into the lucrative business of family themed entertainment.

As Bullock gained more respect and backers in the industry, more creative ideas blossomed, including "gated communities in Russia, the civilized version of Dacha that everyone was dreaming about and few people owned during Soviet times," which ultimately yielded over 10 million square feet of property currently under development in Russia and the restoration of large-scale projects, such as an arts building in the center of Moscow just a few steps away from the Kremlin. The work in Russia allowed Bullock to expand her restoration skills to places like Paris, St. Tropez, London, Gstaad and, eventually, bring them back to the canvas of New York.

Bullock's work in New York is essentially a one-woman show which she operates from her custom-designed penthouse on the upper east side. Largely to pass the time while she visited her daughters, Zowie and Eugenia, at school here, she chose the restoration of old mansions both because she saw a niche where she wouldn't have to compete with the "macho guys who have generations of family behind them in the industry" and because the possibilities of rejoining broken up townhouse to recreate the old mansions charmed her.

Bullock restored several renowned mansions, including the classic Beaux Art style 82nd Street mansion, and 54 East 64th street and 9 East 67th street that have won praise from aficionados that include design legend, Albert Haley, and were featured show houses of both the 2005 Kips Bay Decorators Showhouse and the 2006 International Designers Showhouse. In addition to restoring the structures, she added modern day features such as smart panels that can fill your teapot or bathtub with the touch of a button.

"People in the 21st Century deserve the blend of the old time beauty of the structure given to the buildings by the original architects and the modern day features," Bullock said.

Though Bullock admits her artistic sensibilities are largely instinctual, they are rooted deep in her upbringing. Her passion for different styles of art, for instance, developed partly as an internal rebellion against stringent Soviet regulations. She remembers being impacted by the "Bulldozer exhibition" of 1974 in Belyayevo, when a cavalry of police armed with bulldozers and water cannons plowed through an underground exhibition of avant garde artists and razed their work. She also clearly remembers a time when, in the late 1980's and hugely pregnant with her daughter, she traveled by train to St Petersburg and waited on line for eight hours to see her first surrealist exhibition..

"We had only been exposed to very realistic socialist paintings before, that basically tried to get you to believe how happy everyone is by living in a socialist environment," Bullock said. "It is hard to describe how it feels to see new kinds of media you had never been exposed to before. I remember standing there in front of an Andrew Tichovolsky painting and feeling shocked, literally shocked, the goosebumps rose on my skin to see that painting two feet in front of me."

Change has come slowly to Russia, and Bullock knows that it is still mainly the very wealthy who can afford that kind of experience. Accordingly she has helped to sponsor and organize events to bring artists from all disciplines to Russia. Most recently, RI Group, in conjunction with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Moscow Mortgage Bank, sponsored the Matthew Barney film retrospective as part of the Moscow International Biennial of Contemporary Art. Barney's independent films, which are highly visual and incorporate fine art works into the stills, include the Cremaster Cycle and, most recently, Drawing Restraint 9, which features Icelandic singer songwriter, Bjork, Barney's long time partner. His films had never been shown in Russia before.