• The Nantes-Saint-Nazaire Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) claims to have found a solution to finance the Heron Tree.

  • Nantes Métropole had announced in September to abandon the project because of its growing cost.

"L'Arbre aux hérons has not said its last word", affirmed "loudly" its designers, François Delarozière and Pierre Oréfice, in a public declaration dated last Thursday.

Five days later, the trend seems to be confirmed since the Nantes-Saint-Nazaire Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) announces that a private financing solution is about to be found. 

“We have found an economic model, with investors and bankers who are ready, indicates to

20 Minutes

Yann Trichard, the president of the CCI, confirming information from

Ouest-France

.

The logic, as in a concession, is that the private sector comes to help the public by investing in a company to build the Tree, manage it and operate it.

But the objective is that in the long term, it will be returned to the people of Nantes and to the metropolis, which provides a location.

»

Investors and non patrons

The ambitious project, which would take the form of a green metal structure on which the public could wander, in the heart of the Misery quarry, is currently estimated by the CCI at “53 or 55 million euros”.

A budget that could soon be completed insofar as offering companies and individuals to become investors, and not patrons as hitherto envisaged, would arouse more enthusiasm. 

If the relaunch of the project would therefore be “possible”, according to the CCI, many details are still to be settled before presenting the file to the president of Nantes metropolis and engaging in discussions.

Due to an explosion of costs, Johanna Rolland had decided two months ago to abandon the project, which was to be financed one-third by the metropolis, one-third by public actors and one-third by private actors.

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