After long months, not to say years, under artificial respiration, the controversial project of the ZAC des Bouscatiers, in Villeneuve, was disconnected by the town hall and the developer Nexity, announced the mayor Pasacale Bories this Friday morning. A great consultation of the population must now follow.
It is an understatement to say that this project will have spilled some ink. Think about it: initiated in 2004, the Bouscatiers concerted development zone project, which planned to build between 450 and 550 housing units on 35 hectares in the heights of Villeneuve, has still not started 17 years later.
There are good reasons for this, recalls Pascale Bories, at least a week before the meeting of the municipal council which must initiate the termination of the concession contract which bound the municipality to the developer Nexity for this project. Part of the observation, still true of the rest, that it was necessary “Welcome young people” on the town, traces the mayor, the town thought it could do it outside the old center “So as not to distort the city” with a large urban planning project ” coherent “.
Head for Les Bouscatiers, therefore, an area marked by the municipality in 2006. In February 2007, the developer Nexity was selected. The project starts, an environmental approach study of town planning is carried out, and in 2009, the prefect declares the project of public utility. His successors will extend the decree in 2014 and then in 2019, before the Administrative Court ends up canceling the said decree on October 6, 2020, for what today looks like the fourth nail stuck in the lid of the coffin of the ZAC.
Meanwhile, the Local Urban Plan (PLU) was attacked in 2008. “The PLU was re-established on the merits in 2012, so the project was put on hold during this time”, explains Pascale Bories. This pitfall passed, the concession contract was signed with Nexity in 2014.
However : “Between 2008 and 2014 many laws were negotiated, Grenelle 1 and 2, ELAN and, the pompon, the Duflot law (ALUR, editor’s note), which modified the framework for town planning, the environment and construction and new constraints imposed ”, pursuing the chosen one. Enough to complicate things before, therefore, the coup de grace of the Administrative Tribunal almost a year ago.
And after such a long delay, “The considerations of the time are not the same as today”, summary the mayor who speaks “Of a dated project, and which dated”, frozen by a creation file impossible to modify unless you start from scratch. In short, both on the side of the town and Nexity, we stop the costs.
A major consultation will start
“After long months of negotiations with Nexity, we obtained the termination by mutual agreement of the concession contract which binds us”, explains Pascale Bories. Tight negotiations which today allow the municipality to get rid of this project which has become cumbersome for the miraculous amount of… zero euros. “There is no compensation”, poses Pascale Bories, evoking “A long-term job” to achieve this result.
So that’s it, it’s over for the ZAC des Bouscatiers project, a project that got off to a bad start and ended up in a fishtail. However, this does not mean that there will never be anything on the ZAC fire sites. The land remains in “zone to be urbanized” in the PLU and is the subject of an OAP, a planned development operation. In short: they are indeed constructible, under conditions.
Still, we are not ready to see a new real estate project: the town hall has decided to launch a major consultation of the population, “Over the next two years, to have a vision of the Villeneuve population of tomorrow”, explains Pascale Bories. Consultation with a design office, which will see the setting up in particular of public meetings and which will “Beyond constructions, we will talk about mobility, public facilities, beyond that we want to have the pulse of the population”, adds First Deputy Xavier Belleville.
The idea will also be to “To do pedagogy, to understand the complexity” to the inhabitants, he continues. And so avoid carrying around again for years a controversial project.
Thierry allard