Toulouse: The auditorium in Saint-Michel: a buried project?
The State has launched a call for ideas for the sale of the former Saint-Michel prison. The Métropole did not respond to the State’s sale proposal to turn it into an auditorium.
We had to finish the serial of the ex-prison Saint-Michel. The State had agreed to lower the price it was to draw from the sale of the building to Toulouse Métropole, which was to, with the agreement of local residents’ associations, build a Cité de la Musique there for the Orchester du Capitole, with housing, equipment and a public garden around. The State, owner of the ex-prison, disused since 2009, had agreed to divide the initial sale price set by the Domains, from 11 million euros in 2010 to 5.5 million in 2019.
But since this proposal, the mayor of Toulouse has announced that he would only commit if the State, but also the Department and the Region, would also commit alongside the Metropolis to finance the auditorium project which is sorely lacking at the Orchester du Capitole. The State, represented by the Regional Directorate of Public Finance of Occitanie, which first sought to bail out the coffers, launched a call for projects on July 21. Has he had enough of these procrastination? Did he want to speed up the procedure, or relaunch, with a free hand, the sale of the triply remarkable building, in terms of heritage, architecture and history?
The site reconversion study
“The objective is to find the best assignment for this property complex, in connection with Toulouse Métropole, while respecting the architecture and history of this site”, reassures the preamble to the specifications of the call for tenders. ideas, which “is neither an official procedure of sale nor a competition”, but nevertheless prefigures the sale by the State and the selection of a purchaser of real estate by call for tenders. The specifications mention “the site conversion study with a view to creating a Cité de la Musique”.
But he does not recall that all the buildings of the star (rotunda and its five branches) are to be kept, as a “protected built establishment” according to the local urban plan. He even specifies that the call for ideas “aims to allow proposals for at least partial reuse of existing buildings, constituting a real alternative to their demolition”.
And to add: “This evaluation (5.5 million) will have to be updated […] any project developed with a floor area greater than the concerted project in 2019, for residential, economic or commercial purposes, will increase the land value of the site”. In other words, the more housing, offices and shops there are, the more the State will sell the prison for more.
For the Saint-Michel district committee, “The State’s call for ideas paves the way for a private acquisition of the site. The town hall of Toulouse announces the abandonment of its commitment to acquire”. The association will relaunch the procedure for classifying the entire prison as a Historic Monument (only the Castelet is listed). She considers the prison, and the auditorium, threatened.