The City of Paris is buying the Bataclan business from the Lagardère group, the first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire announced on Friday. This buyout of the Bataclan entertainment company, for 1.4 million euros, is carried out via the public limited company (SAE) of the Palais omnisports de Paris-Bercy (POPB), whose board of directors validated the project on Thursday, said Emmanuel Grégoire. It will have to be ratified next week at the Paris Council.
The Lagardère group has accepted the SAE POPB offer, confirmed Jérôme Langlet, managing director of the Lagardère Live Entertainment subsidiary, which also owns the Folies Bergère and the Casino de Paris. “If the project is confirmed, we are convinced that the teams of the Accor Arena (Bercy, editor’s note) and of the town hall of Paris will know, alongside the Bataclan team, continue to write this cultural and committed history”, did he declare.
Industrial and cultural interest
“In addition to the extremely strong symbolic charge that binds this room to the city of Paris” since the attacks, the Bataclan “interests us a lot on the industrial and cultural level”, underlined Emmanuel Grégoire, also president of the SAE POPB, company of mixed economy of the City. The City will thus have “a third room in the bosom of the SAE POPB with Bercy and the future Arena 2 of the Porte de la Chapelle, on 3 very complementary gauge slots: 1,000 to 1,700 spectators for the Bataclan, 5,000 to 8,000 for the ‘Arena 2 and 12,000 to 20,000 for Bercy,’ adds the first deputy.
Located in the 11th arrondissement, the Bataclan, a legendary hall inaugurated in 1865, was the target of the most deadly attack of the jihadist attacks of November 13, 2015, which killed 130 people in the capital and in Saint-Denis. For three hours, three jihadists killed 90 people there among the 1,500 spectators who came to attend the Eagles of Death Metal concert.