The area was given the name Žirmūnai during the early 1960s, when it became the site of an award-winning residential construction project; it was the first city district in the Lithuanian SSR to be constructed applying urban planning concepts established in the USSR at the time. The massive Palace of Concerts and Sports and Žalgiris Stadium are other relics of Žirmūnai's Soviet history. Žirmūnai was important to the industrial sector in the USSR; since that time, this function has been replaced or supplanted by newer businesses, including some of Lithuania's leading companies.