• This Tuesday, the “Rue Bordelaise” could once again stir up the debates while the council meeting will be devoted to town planning and housing.

  • Part of the opposition wants to see more clearly the reasons why the project can neither be stopped nor be changed in depth.

  • The majority recalled that the legal conditions expose it to a strong penalty of 100 million euros, in the event of a net stop of the program.

This Tuesday, the “Rue Bordelaise” or “Rue Saget” project, as the mayor of Bordeaux prefers to call it, could invite itself into the meeting dominated by the housing and town planning themes of the municipal council and cause some stir. The evocation of the subject had already agitated the meeting of January 26, the group Bordeaux Ensemble led by the former mayor Nicolas Florian (LR) had even ended up leaving the meeting. La Rue Saget is a mixed-use project located on the perimeter of the Euratlantic national interest operation with a strong commercial connotation since the retail space will approach 30,000 m2.

On January 20, the environmentalist mayor of Bordeaux Pierre Hurmic presented to the press his amended version of the Rue Bordelaise project, which he rather calls Rue Saget.

While he had campaigned by opposing the gigantic project carried by the promoter Apsys and valued at 500 million euros, he could only include some modifications to the margin, since the cancellation of this operation between the platforms and the station would cost 100 million euros.

In short, the mayor of Bordeaux argues that he did not know the legal conditions of the case and that these do not allow him to cancel it completely.

The mayor assures to have "exerted a strong pressure on the promoter"

Nicolas Florian was in favor of the project and had given an agreement in principle to the promoter Apsys when he was in office.

But the former mayor maintains that substantive amendments remain possible.

“I was assuming that as long as the building permits weren't signed, if [the planners] didn't do what I wanted, they wouldn't get the building permits.

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"It is a coup in the sense that the financial consequences of stopping the project are immense and unassumable for communities and the State, clarifies for his part Pierre Hurmic to

20 Minutes

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Let us recall that the Euratlantique board of directors voted unanimously for the Apsys project and no member intended to finance any part of such compensation.

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The mayor of Bordeaux claims to have "exerted strong pressure on the promoter" who is not from Bordeaux and has no other projects in the city, to develop the project at the end of last year.

"Building permits, if they comply with the PLU, cannot be refused", underlines this lawyer by profession.

A lack of political will?

Before the second round of the municipal elections, the outgoing mayor had sealed an alliance with the candidate En Marche Thomas Cazenave, who had notably laid down as a condition a profound revision of this project. “I regret that Pierre Hurmic closed this file so quickly, all alone and without any convincing evidence to convince us that there was no alternative. I'm not saying it's easy, but I don't understand why he didn't fight harder. In his place, I would probably have commissioned an audit ”, comments Thomas Cazenave, who has the hope of“ clarifying this matter ”.

The mayor of Bordeaux argues that he “could not have been aware of the protocol between Apsys and the public development establishment (EPA) because it had been authorized by the board of directors of the EPA, which he did not was not a member, then signed by the director of the EPA, without any presentation in city council. It should be remembered that the deliberations of the Euratlantique board of directors are not public.

Elected after a campaign in favor of stopping the project, the environmentalist mayor had no political interest in maintaining it.

For Nicolas Florian, the metropolis was not on the same wavelength as the new elected.

“[Alain] Anziani [the president of the metropolis] had to tell him that the project had an interest and Hurmic had to swallow his hat, he sums up.

He is not proactive enough and he does not know the files.

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Our dossier on Bordeaux

We have not finished talking about this major project since a deliberation devoted to the project itself should be proposed to the municipal council this summer.

Bordeaux

Bordeaux: Tramway, cable car, Rue Bordelaise… We are starting to see more clearly on certain hot issues

Bordeaux

Bordeaux: More housing, less parking, Pierre Hurmic delivers his version of Rue Bordelaise

  • Pierre Hurmic

  • Housing

  • Aquitaine

  • Town planning

  • Bordeaux