GYMNASTICS: “The support phase towards other solutions has been ensured” says Colonel Régis Deza
The director of the SDIS Régis Deza gives his version in the file concerning the Dijon Gym Art training room located within the Transvaal barracks in Dijon.
At the end of July, Dijon Gym Art, an association with 300 members and employing four coaches, alerted us to its future via a press release, denouncing “a delicate situation” for the future of the club, announcing that the agreement linking it to the SDIS of Côte-d’Or for the use of the premises will not be renewed by the director of the Departmental Service Régis Deza.
Having taken office in June 2021, Régis Deza wanted to react to this file. By recalling first: “Historically, this room had been made available to sports associations by the head of the body who was at the time a municipal employee. Since 2016, an agreement has effectively linked the SDIS and the club. However, when I arrived, when it was necessary to renew the agreement for five years, I realized that no application had been made for the room to meet the regulations of an establishment suitable for the public, for the simple and good reason that the building is located in the middle of a barracks and is subject to the labor code. As a director charged by the prefect with fire prevention in all the public buildings in the department, I cannot welcome children in safe conditions that I would refuse anywhere else in the department”.
The opportunity for the director of the SDIS to point out: “it’s not a gymnasium, it’s a sports platform in the middle of the barracks of which it is an integral part”. In addition, during a reinforced vigipirate period when I arrived last year, I was still surprised to let people I do not know enter the barracks”. Its decision was then not to renew the agreement and to “say stop” to the provision of the premises.
Faced with this decision communicated to the parties concerned three months before the following season, Gym Art, with the support of the City of Dijon, then obtained from the board of directors of the SDIS a special authorization to use the premises of September 2021 to June 30, 2022, in other words for the 2021-2022 season before another solution is found by the club to be able to continue its activities. “But I did say that the use of our premises would no longer be possible afterwards. In addition, Gym Art did not even want to sign the special authorization proposed and nevertheless used our premises this season”, insists Régis Deza, who also argues that “the City of Dijon has approached the association and offered other rooms and works to the club”.
While regretting the “media route” prize by Dijon Gym Art, the director of the SDIS completes his clarification: “we believe that the support phase towards other solutions has been ensured. Gym Art does not want to make its share of efforts by agreeing to change location. And he announces: “We are going to change the keys for access to the room anyway. Bringing it up to standard so that it becomes an ERP is conceptually not possible, or else it would require more than 500,000 euros of work”.
Alix Berthier