Project in Paris Reflects City’s Ambitions for the Suburbs
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — The Paris of grand monuments, stately boulevards and haute cuisine is justly famous. But the city is also the hub of the world’s fifth-largest economy, with more than two million people grappling with 21st-century problems of global competitiveness, immigration and assimilation, and a chronic shortage of affordable housing. In response, the city government has begun an ambitious program of large-scale, mixed-use developments on the periphery. The goals are twofold: creating an engine for economic growth while preserving the Belle Époque Paris beloved by tens of millions of tourists; and integrating the prosperous city with struggling inner-ring suburbs, or banlieues. Though France, and much of Europe, remains mired in economic malaise, one such development, the Clichy Batignolles project in northwest Paris, is gaining momentum this year after more than a decade of planning. The first residents moved in last fall, the second phase of a much-loved and much-needed park is close to completion, an office complex that will be owned by the New York real estate company Tishman Speyer is seeking tenants, and site preparation is nearly done for a soaring courthouse designed by Renzo Piano’s studio that will be one of the tallest buildings in Paris. Mr. Piano first made his mark in Paris with the radical Pompidou Center in the mid-1970s. He acknowledged that the courthouse and the Clichy Batignolles project were taking Paris in a different direction — but a necessary one, he argued in an interview at his Paris workshop. “We are celebrating a shift in the history of the town,” he said. “We are bringing the fertilizing elements to the periphery. You are changing something, and changing something is not easy.” By the numbers, the 133-acre project is impressive for any city: 12,700 projected jobs; 3,400 housing units, subsidized and market-rate; 1.5 million square feet of office space; 410,000 square feet of public facilities, including schools; 334,000 square feet of shops and services — and 90 courtrooms and offices to accommodate some 8,000 people a day in the 524-foot-tall courthouse. Garbage and recyclables will be collected with a system of pneumatic tubes, sharply cutting emissions and odors. Buildings with “green” roofs with vegetation, slabs of photovoltaic cells and geothermal heating point to an ambitious goal of carbon neutrality. The project will offer commuters and residents a range of transportation options, including two new Metro stations, an extension of the tramway that nearly circles the city, a regional rail station and a 600-space underground parking garage. But Paris being Paris, the prospect of high-rise offices, glossy apartment blocks and a large influx of low-income housing has not been received with great enthusiasm. Brigitte Kuster, the maire, or mayor, of the 17th Arrondissement, protested that the area already had a large amount of subsidized housing, said Hubert Jamault, her chief of staff. Ms. Kuster, he said, “is not against the construction of social housing, but she does not want all the difficulties to be concentrated in the same place.” Now, he said, after a petition drive, appeals to the city council and “numerous” public meetings with the city, her concerns have largely been addressed. The decision to allow buildings up to 50 meters tall (about 160 feet) “has been the subject of a broad dialogue with local residents,” said Anne Hidalgo, a deputy mayor of Paris and a champion of the project. (The courthouse is an exception.) Ms. Hidalgo, a leading candidate for mayor in elections next year, said the height of the buildings would be in proportion to the park — similar to Central Park in New York — and would allow for innovative architecture, and views and light for inhabitants. “I’m quite happy with the results,” Ms. Hidalgo said via e-mail, “which offer Paris a new neighborhood that is ecological, a pleasant place to live, innovative in all ways, very Parisian, and resolutely turned toward the future.” Clichy Batignolles, named for the adjoining neighborhoods, was first planned in 2001 under Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris and Ms. Hidalgo, said Didier Bailly, director general of Paris Batignolles Aménagement, the corporation formed to oversee much of the project. In the subsequent years, transportation, housing and office components were added, and — reminiscent of the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan — the site became a centerpiece of Paris’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, which were captured by London. By 2008, Mr. Bailly said, all the components of the project were in place with the deal to build the courthouse. That year, though, the persistent recession that the French call “la crise” struck. “The crisis means that investors are extremely demanding,” Mr. Bailly said. “They have means, but they’re very attentive to how it’s invested; they want to ensure the safety of their investment.” Some developers have delayed building in Clichy Batignolles, hoping that the market will improve. No large commercial tenants have yet committed to the project. Tishman Speyer, for one, is confident enough in the project, and the French economy, to have invested about 200 million euros (about $260 million) in two office buildings — even before work started and any tenants had signed on. The project, called Pont Cardinet, will offer a total of about 25,000 square meters (about 270,000 square feet) of office space and is expected to be finished early next year. Michael P. Spies, the head of European operations for Tishman Speyer, declined to say what asking rents would be, except to say they would be at a “substantial discount” to rents in central Paris, which can exceed 800 euros a square meter (about $100 per square foot). “This has been in the making for many, many years,” Mr. Spies said, “and now its time has come.” Leasing is being handled in part by CBRE, which hopes to have tenants by the end of the year, said Laurent Lehmann, the head of marketing for CBRE in France. He described the Paris office market as “not too bad,” adding that rents were at or slightly below 2011 levels, and that landlords were still offering incentives like free rent periods or upgrades to spaces. A report by CBRE found that average rents for new or renovated offices in the Île de France region, which includes Paris, declined by 1.3 percent year over year, to 295 euros per square meter (about $36 per square foot) as of Jan. 1. Rents in the most desirable buildings in central Paris — with which Pont Cardinet hopes to compete — were up 3 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, to 771 euros per square meter (about $93 per square foot). In comparison, asking rents for Class A office space in Manhattan are about $70 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield. “One thing we like about the Cardinet project,” Mr. Spies said, “is that these are low-rise buildings that can be delivered in a very short time and really suit the marketplace. Risk grows the further out you look.” Emerige, a developer of two residential buildings on the site, has taken steps to minimize risk, said Laurent Dumas, the chief executive. One building will have 48 units of subsidized housing, and will be sold to a company that will manage it and rent it out. The other, a market-rate building, will have 79 apartments for sale. The project was designed jointly by the firm of the French architect Christian Biecher, and MAD, a Chinese firm. The choice of MAD was an effort to tap the lucrative Chinese market, Mr. Dumas said. He added that he had fielded many calls from potential Chinese buyers, even though construction had not yet started. The units are expected to sell for an average of 12,000 euros per square meter, or about $1,450 per square foot. By comparison, the average price per square foot for new condominiums in Manhattan is $1,332 per square foot, according to the real estate company Douglas Elliman. Clichy Batignolles’s town square is the 25-acre Martin Luther King Park, the first section of which opened in 2007. The park includes age-segregated playgrounds, a skateboard park, community gardens — and that Parisian rarity, an absence of “Pelouse interdite,” or “Keep off the grass” signs. A second section scheduled to open early next year will have a more naturalistic bent, with a lily pond stocked with carp and ringed by cattails and reeds, an exercise course through a forest, and a tree-lined promenade. If the park is Clichy Batignolles’s town square, the new courthouse will be its city hall. The building, scheduled to open in 2017, consists of three receding blocks set atop a grand podium. It will house the Tribunal de Grande Instance, or lower court, as well as district courts now attached to each arrondissement. The French builder Bouygues Construction, a subsidiary of the Bouygues Group, will be the developer of the 575 million-euro project, in a so-called public-private partnership. In conceiving the building, Mr. Piano said he thought of it as a “machine of justice” serving all parts of society. Nearly full-floor windows and an active system of blinds will give the courthouse a crystalline and luminous aspect, he said, in contrast to a typical monolithic hall of justice. “The idea,” he said, “is to create trust, not by intimidation but by a sense of light and openness.” <NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM> <p>This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: May 22, 2013 <p>Because of an editing error, a summary with an earlier version of this article misstated the size of the Clichy Batignolles project in northwest Paris. It is 133 acres, not 154. |