The Paris Olympics 2024 construction sites in the starting blocks

“We are at a tipping point,” explains Nicolas Ferrand, general manager of the Olympic Works Delivery Company (Solideo), to qualify the year 2021 which will see dozens of cranes and thousands of workers disembark.

Everything must be completed by December 2023.

Work on the Olympic village, a centerpiece of 300.000 square meters, located in Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and Ile-Saint-Denis, will begin in March. "The 26 building permits have been obtained and the sales have been signed", rejoiced Mr. Ferrand, chief authorizing officer of the Solideo, during a press conference this week.

Miracle, the Covid and the first confinement were only barely a month late.

Among what Nicolas Ferrand nevertheless qualifies as a "great difficulty": a Canadian investor partner of Vinci flew off along the way. 50.000 square meters of offices await buyers right in the middle of the Olympic Village, which will become a residential area in 2025.

A "big ministry" is in line to install its central administration there, once the athletes have left. The call for tenders is in progress.

Not far from the Olympic Village, construction of the brand new Olympic Aquatic Center, known as "CAO" in Olympic jargon, will be launched in the spring.

"A beautiful beast"

"A beautiful beast!", Comments Patrick Ollier, president LR of the Metropolis of Grand Paris, owner of this swimming pool built by Bouygues, which will receive diving, synchronized swimming and water polo.

In total, the Solideo, which has a public money budget of nearly 1,4 billion euros (out of approximately 3,2 billion), supervises 62 structures.

Another major project: the media village, in the north of the department, near the Bourget airport. It will be built in two stages, part of it being built after the Games, with a total of 1.300 housing units.

Justice rejects appeal against media village

The justice rejected Friday the appeal filed by opponents to the cession of part of the Georges-Valbon departmental park in Seine-Saint-Denis, which is to host the media village for the Paris-2024 Olympic Games and then be transformed into eco-district, according to a decision consulted on Saturday by AFP.

In this summary appeal (emergency measure) filed on January 28 before the Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris, the National Movement for the Fight for the Environment (MNLE 93), the Collectif pour le Triangle de Gonesse and a dozen 'users of this immense park demanded the cancellation of the cession of the land by the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis.

"These plots, assigned for decades to leisure and sports, festivals, these green and wooded spaces with their biodiversity, their flora and fauna will be destroyed and sold in batches to concrete mixers and promoters", denounced these opponents.

The sale of part of the "Aire des Vents", located in the town of Dugny, was voted on December 10, in favor of the delivery company of Olympic works (Solideo) for 6,9 million euros .

The area, partly concrete and which traditionally hosts the Huma Festival, must be transformed in view of the Olympic Games. The project plans to build the media village there, which will then become an eco-district with 1.300 homes and shops.

The opponents denounce a "definitive artificialization" and "the amputation" of this park of 400 hectares, located for the most part in the town of Courneuve, the green lung of a very densely populated department, where "the population is increasing every year of 15.000 new inhabitants ".

The group of associations will file a new legal action, this time against the environmental authorization issued by the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, Jean-Marie Baty, president of MNLE 93, told AFP on Saturday.

The opponents do not intend to surrender: "We have already led the fight against Europacity -project of megacomplex of leisure and commerce which was to settle on the lands of the Triangle of Gonesse, in the Val-d'Oise-, of which we said it was David against Goliath, and we won it ", argues Jean-Marie Baty.