Don't trust anyone. Everyone knows about the Intourist Hotel, that monumentally ugly thing that has no business looming so close to Red Square. Everyone knows the city sold it. Everyone knows some company called Redbone Brothers bought it.

Wait. Stop. There's no such thing as Redbone Brothers, despite what's been printed elsewhere. The name is a victim of the unfortunate Russian inability to pronounce "th." It's actually Rathbone Brothers, a British investment advisory firm.

But, wait. That's not right, either. Rathbone Brothers didn't buy the hotel. They just advised a company called Superior Ventures on the deal, according to a Rathbone official who asked to remain unnamed. Contrary to other reports, Superior Ventures isn't the Russian subsidiary of Rathbone. It's not Russian. It's probably not British, either - neither the British Embassy nor the British-Russian Camber of Commerce has ever heard of it.

Neither Rathbone nor the Moscow International Tender Center will say who Superior Ventures is. In fact, the Tender Center has barely heard of them. As far as they're concerned, the hotel was sold to Rathbone, according to David Pirtskhalava, who managed the sale.

And no one in Moscow's real estate community has heard of Superior Ventures. In fact, no one in Moscow's real estate community appears to have met anyone who has heard of Superior Ventures.

But this much is clear: The hotel site was bought by someone - probably Superior Ventures - for $22 million, and the Intourist as we know it will be demolished.

Most readers can stop there. Demolishing the Intourist, after all, is the most important part of the whole exercise. Unless, of course, you happen to be Superior Ventures, in which case you want a new hotel so you can make a profit.

Hyatt International - the international chain reportedly awarded the contract to manage the Intourist's replacement - is engaged "in negotiations for a project in Moscow and [is] in the process of wrapping it up," according to a written statement from Andre Pury, Hyatt's senior vice president for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Neither he nor the anonymous spokeswoman who sent me the statement would divulge with whom Hyatt is negotiating.

Beyond that, nothing is clear. According to other reports, the Intourist will be replaced with a $130-million, 12-story hotel. But other reports were wrong about everything else, so you make the call.

The Swedish are coming...

We've heard about invaders from Scandinavia going berserk, but Ikea takes the cake. First, it announced it would build in Russia - the country whose laws and unstable market scared it off for six years - one of its biggest stores anywhere, plus a whole shopping center to boot. Now, the Swedish furniture chain is on a rampage, with a second site already purchased and two more in the works.

Ikea recently completed the purchase of a 54 hectare site southwest of Moscow, on which construction will likely begin about six months after Ikea's first store opens, said Natalia Oreshina, retail property consultant at Stiles & Riabokobylko. That store - situated on about the same amount of land in the suburb of Khimki - is slated to open in March.

Ikea told the world weeks ago that it planned a total of six to seven stores in Russia, but, at the time, Johannes Stenberg, Ikea's deputy retail manager for Russia, said it would take 10 to 15 years. For the beginning, at least, the pace looks a lot quicker than that.

Stiles & Riabokobylko, part of the Healey & Baker network of real estate agencies, is helping the company scout out two smaller sites, to be located somewhere along Moscow's third ring road, probably in the west of the city, Oreshina said. Those sites will likely house Ikea outlets alone.

Both Khimki and the new site - planned along the same model - will house mammoth shopping centers, complete with a hypermarket, sporting goods store, do-it-yourself store and smaller shops. In Khimki, Ikea plans to spend $100 million developing the mall; a similar amount will likely be spent on the second site.

Stiles & Riabokobylko is currently marketing the sites to European hypermarket chains, Oreshina said, and once they're signed, they'll begin filling up the rest of the space in earnest. Already, though, the agency has gotten letters of intent for 10,000 square meters worth of space in smaller shops, said managing director Sergey Riabokobylko.

(Hyatt's senior vice president for Europe, Africa and the Middle East e-mailed Building Blocks. You should too, at sam@russiajournal.com)