The Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) training pool project for the Paris 2024 Olympics has been granted by the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal.
The Paris Administrative Court of Appeal gave the green light on Thursday to the Aubervilliers training pool project (Seine-Saint-Denis) for the Paris 2024 Olympics, the new version of which preserves the adjoining allotments.
“The project on which the Court ruled had evolved very clearly compared to the initial project”, estimated this court in a press release. “Two modifying permits have been issued, which have profoundly modified the original project by first removing the restaurant initially planned, then the equipment which was to encroach on the perimeter of the allotment gardens, in particular the mineral beach, the fitness area and well-being and the solarium which appeared in the first project”, she justified.
Located near Paris, the aquatic center must be finalized in time to allow Olympic athletes to train there before the events, before welcoming the general public after the Olympics.
But its initial location, straddling centuries-old allotments, had aroused the ire of environmental activists who engaged in a legal standoff.
To obtain this validation, the city of Aubervilliers, obliged to review its copy, presented the judge with a new version of the project.
It has therefore excluded the object of all tensions: the construction of a “solarium”, a sort of mineral terrace nibbling 4,000 m2 of food plots on the 2.5 hectares (25,000 m2) of the Gardens of Virtues.
Opponents saw in this additional equipment a symbol of “concreting” which further asphyxiates cities, in reverse according to them of the ecological emergency.
This work would have caused “hardly reversible consequences” in this “primary core of biodiversity”, had estimated the judge in chambers in March, summoning the city to immediately stop this part of the site.
The gardens concerned had already been destroyed by the backhoe loaders.
“There will be no construction, the project has been abandoned. The solarium will not be done,” the city of Aubervilliers told AFP on Thursday.
On the other part of the site, “two cranes were installed in June to prepare for the resumption of work”, she added. The earthworks are “in the process of being completed” and the structural work must start “by the end of July”.
Delivery of the equipment is scheduled for “April 2024”, just in time for the Games (July 26-August 11).