JO-2024: opponents of the sale of part of a park take legal action

"These plots, allocated for decades to leisure and sports, festivals, these green and wooded spaces with their biodiversity, their fauna and flora will be destroyed and sold in batches to concrete mixers and developers", denounced the applicants in a statement. communicated.

The departmental section of the National Movement for the Fight for the Environment (MNLE 93), the Collectif pour le Triangle de Gonesse and a dozen park users announced that they had filed on December 28 an appeal against the decision of the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis.

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 concreted and which traditionally hosts the Huma Festival, must be transformed for the Olympic Games. The project plans to build the media village there, which will then be transformed into an eco-district with 1.300 homes and shops.

Opponents denounce a "definitive artificialization" and "amputation" of the park, the green lung of this very densely populated department.

"We can do otherwise. We are not at all opposed to a provisional 'media cluster' being built as it was at the time of COP21", said Jean-Marie Baty, president of MNLE 93.

The summary suspension must be studied by the administrative court of appeal of Paris, competent for disputes related to the Olympic Games-2024.

"All the procedures were done in the rules and in the transparency", reacted to AFP the departmental council. An argument taken up by the company Solideo, requested by AFP.

"If we had done something temporary, the environmental impact would have been very questionable and no one would have understood that we do not take advantage of the Games to leave a legacy and have more housing," he added, recalling that "100.000 applicants for social housing in Seine-Saint-Denis" are patient for lack of sufficient supply.

At the same time, 13 hectares of land, inaccessible because polluted by hydrocarbons, are being cleaned up and will be integrated into the park. In total, "we will expand the park," said the department, which indicates that the association at the initiative of the request will be received in the coming weeks.