Real estate project in Paris: “Latin Quarter: silence, on the hollow”
A Paris, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, on the Sainte-Geneviève mountain, is silently embarking on a gigantic real estate project, which raises very interesting questions about the devolution of the public domain (here, the former Ecole polytechnique) to private companies (here, LVMH), and on new methods of ” governance “ public institutions. This involves renovating the famous pediment (listed as a historic monument) and the adjoining buildings of the rue Descartes entrance to the former Ecole polytechnique (1805-1975).
These works, necessary and financed from public funds for a reasonable amount of 1.5 million euros, have been transformed, making progress, and real estate appetite helping, with the appearance of a “patron” private: it has now become a pharaonic project of 30 million euros, with the excavation of three basement levels and the covering of a raised courtyard, entirely financed by LVMH, a group directed by the former polytechnician Bernard Arnault.
Since the change of governance at Polytechnique, in March 2013, with the appointment of an executive chairman from the private sector, Jacques Biot (2013-2018), an independent consultant, then Eric Labaye, from McKinsey, and the injunction made by public authorities seeking all-out private funds for the functioning of institutions, a certain number of real estate projects have flourished.
Academic public domain and private enterprise
In Palaiseau (Polytechnique’s location since 1976), the construction project for a TotalEnergies building in the heart of the academic campus was abandoned, following the mobilization of young students and former students: far from opposing companies in general, nor this one in particular, they simply defended the maintenance of a clear boundary between the academic public domain and private influence.
The LVMH-Descartes project is even more astonishing when analyzed. Everything Seems Legal, But Made Easy by many changes in mentalities and practices, all of which are moving in the direction of an increasingly loose evolution from the public domain to private companies.
For example, the building permit, granted to the Ecole Polytechnique at the end of 2019, was transferred to LVMH: the State and its public establishments even go so far as to abandon their “project management” to the private sector. What facilitated the construction site with the traders (cafés-restaurants) possibly impacted by the. The City of Paris is not left out.
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