Clap of the end for the major renovation project of the Gare du Nord.

The SNCF announced Tuesday, September 21 that it was abandoning the gigantic transformation project of this station carried by a joint company between Ceetrus, a real estate subsidiary of the Auchan group, and the SNCF.

"Given the unbearable drifts compared to contractual commitments", SNCF Gares & Connexions "can only note the serious failure of its concessionaire and pronounce its forfeiture", said in a press release the subsidiary of SNCF in charge of stations.

The site was to triple the area of ​​the first station in Europe in anticipation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024.

After the announcement of the SNCF, the town hall of Paris called "not to postpone once again the modernization and renovation of the station".

"We are available and willing to initiate a new renovation project for the Gare du Nord which is at the service of daily users, urban integration and intermodality", said in a press release Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy of the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo.

A "considerable delay" in the works

SNCF Gares & Connexions had been warned in July of a slippage in the estimated cost of the works, bringing the bill to more than 1.5 billion euros, against 500 million still envisaged at the end of 2020, and of a "considerable delay". preventing it from being completed by the 2024 Olympics as initially planned. 

The government asked the SNCF to prepare a "much smaller" project for the Gare du Nord, around 50 million euros, announced the Minister for Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari. 

SNCF Gares & Connexions, for its part, now promises "a rapid adaptation of the Gare du Nord to the challenges" of the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympic Games of 2024. It is also committed to "the design of a new transformation project […] drawn up in close consultation with the public actors concerned ".

The concession was entrusted to SA Gare du Nord 2024 (StatioNord), a joint venture formed by the real estate company Ceetrus (66%), an Auchan subsidiary responsible for the design, works and their financing, and by SNCF Gares & Connexions . In the initial version of the transformation project, the Gare du Nord was to, with an additional 88,000 m², reach a total area of ​​124,000 m², including 46,000 m² devoted to an auditorium, cultural facilities, a sports hall or more shops and offices.

The project had been the subject of a long controversy with the town hall of Paris, which had deemed it too commercial and disconnected from the neighborhood, even if it had originally approved it.

In September 2020, around twenty renowned architects, including Jean Nouvel and Roland Castro, denounced an "unacceptable" and "pharaonic" project, in a column published by the daily Le Monde, asking that it be "fundamentally redesigned in height ".

In November, a less ambitious version of the project was adopted.

This new version reduced the surface area of ​​shops and services by 15%, ie 7,500 m² less, and in particular eliminated the performance hall.

It provided for a reconfiguration of the Eurostar terminal before the Rugby World Cup in September 2023, and the delivery of the new departures terminal by June 2024, just in time for the Olympic Games.

But the inauguration of the new complex was no longer announced before 2025.

For Auchan's real estate subsidiary, this is a new blow.

It had already been confronted in January 2021 with the abandonment by the State of the project for a vast Europacity shopping complex, about fifteen kilometers from Paris, after years of contestation by environmental movements and certain political leaders.

With AFP

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