The Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris invalidated, Thursday, the local urban plan which allowed to destroy part of the allotments of Aubervilliers to establish a swimming pool of training for the Olympic Games of Paris 2024.
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Will the 2024 Olympics training pool be delayed? Thursday, February 10, the Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris invalidated the local urban plan which made it possible to destroy part of the allotments of Aubervilliers to establish this swimming pool there.. “It is enjoined to the president of the public territorial establishment Plaine commune to initiate the procedure of modification of the local plan of intermunicipal urban planning in that it classifies in urban zone part of the western fringe of the gardens of the Virtues”the name of these century-old gardens in Seine-Saint-Denis, decided the court in its judgment consulted by AFP.
The intercommunality, led by the mayor (PS) of Saint-Denis Mathieu Hanotin, has four months to propose a new version, she specified.
The administrative court of appeal of Paris considers that “the urbanization of the western fringe of the gardens of Virtues”for the swimming pool but also a future metro station, “will also undermine the preservation of a core of primary biodiversity and increase existing ecological discontinuities”.
In its judgment, this competent body in matters of disputes surrounding Olympic projects recalled that the contested document presented “inconsistencies” with its own obligations, in particular environmental ones.
The future aquatic center has a solarium, which must be built on approximately 4,000 m2 of food plots. “There is no immediate consequence on the question of the works, the building permit remains valid. It does not call into question the project”, reacted Mathieu Hanotin to AFP, assuring that Plaine commune would comply. Asked, the city of Aubervilliers declared that it did not want to react “at this stage”.
“We have always said that the project was illegitimate, now it is illegal. For the first time justice gives us reason by telling them “you do not have the right to do what you did”responded Ziad Maalouf, one of the gardeners behind the request.
A legal battle has started around the project. Opponents, who consider it once morest the tide of the ecological emergency, also attacked the building permit and occupied the premises for four months in 2021.
Briefly suspended by court order, the work was finally able to continue. This did not prevent activists on February 2 from clinging to a concrete mixer until the intervention of the police.
Worth 33 million euros, a third of which is financed by Solideo (the company responsible for delivering the works for the 2024 Olympic Games), the aquatic center must serve as a training pool for swimmers during the Olympic Games, before to be accessible to residents.