“Place du Louvre could be one of the most beautiful places in Paris. Alas, it is today only an empty and underworld urban neglect. At best: a vacant lot covered in sand. These very harsh words are those of Ariel Weil, the mayor of the Paris Center district. He demanded end of May in the Sunday newspaper an ambitious project to develop this large space on the outskirts of the most famous French museum, at its eastern facade, from the Perrault colonnade to the sidewalk. Alas, the affair is being done on the sly, he laments, like the Communist and Citizen groups, Changer Paris (Les Républicains) and Les Ecologistes au Conseil de Paris, who pushed the executive to speak out on the subject, to impose their vision of the project.
According to our information, the municipality is preparing to vote on a text asking that “the State, the Public Establishment of the Louvre Museum, the Central Town Hall, the Town Hall of Paris Center and all the stakeholders build a project ambitious common public for the benefit of all for the Place du Louvre”, and that “this public project integrates the legitimate concerns related to climate issues by giving an important place to the revegetation of this space and the development of freshness”.
An irritating gourmet restaurant project
Laurence Des Cars, the head of the premises, announced it in April: there will indeed be a project to redevelop the space. But what project? For the moment, we do not know much about it, except what leaked in everyday life The letter a. This investigative media reported in March that the president of the Louvre museum would have considered in small committee with the billionaire Bernard Arnault and the president of the republic Emmanuel Macron to install a gastronomic restaurant there.
Information which triggered the concerns of the Communists of the Council of Paris, in particular, which launched a petition on June 12, in order to “oppose the privatization of the Place du Louvre” “for the benefit of a luxury clientele, and not of all Parisians”. The day before, in the newspaper The worldthe mayor of Paris Center regretted “the narrow ambition to install yet another luxury restaurant”, a project also denied by the LVMH group to 20 minutes.
Parisian elected officials want to green the square
The subject was then invited to the Council of Paris which is being held this week between July 4 and 7, since no less than three wishes were initially submitted respectively by the communist group, the group Les Ecologistes and the group Changer Paris (mainly LR). The three groups emphasize the need for a consultation process for Parisians and the first two are opposed to the installation of a gourmet restaurant and more generally to any commercial space. Finally, everyone agrees that the square needs to be revegetated, at a time when Paris is preparing to live under 50 degrees, in the midst of a climate crisis.
“Among ecologists, we think that we must value a diversity of uses in the center and not let the luxury sector preempt common spaces”, comments Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu, an elected ecologist who portrays the text of her group, withdrawn. for the benefit of the wishes of the executive. “We do not want public spaces of this type to be for the benefit of market logic”, adds Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj, the president of the communist group. He adds: “The priority is to find green spaces in the city, we have a very large space, in a district with very few green spaces, the rue de Rivoli is a heat island”.
“Low vegetation”
Ariel Weil, of the group Paris en Commun (Socialists), is not so much bothered by the restaurant as by the fact that he has been ousted, he who had begun to discuss the project with the former president of the museum, Jean-Luc Martinez. “The restaurant is anecdotal, we don’t know anything about it, what is harmful is that the Louvre has its own project. I am not against sponsoring, however, what seems to me neither legitimate nor appropriate is that the Louvre carry out the project in its corner, a fortiori with private partners and without the town hall. There cannot be a project without the City of Paris”
The mayor of Paris Center would like an international competition for architects and landscape architects to be organised, and has already commissioned Apur, the Atelier parisien d’urbanisme, which has produced artist’s views to imagine what this place, with a garden and “low vegetation”, “so as not to hide the facades”.
A consensus was reached between all these elected officials, which takes up the idea of a project in consultation with the city and the importance of revegetation. Even if the text does not take up the explicit prohibition of a luxury restaurant formulated by the communists and the ecologists, the latter say they are, just like the spokesperson for the Changer Paris group, satisfied with the result. And Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj concludes his remarks as follows: “At least our wish will push for more transparency. »