The payment will take place between 2011 and 2016

At the end of a two-year marathon negotiation, they eventually toper. The Paris City Hall and Unibail-Rodamco come to finalize the agreement awaited funding of the huge site of les Halles. The latter is emblematic of the parliamentary term of Bertrand Delanoë. Unibail-Rodamco, in partnership with AXA, agrees to pay EUR 238 million on the 802 will cost the renovation of the "belly of Paris". This amount will fund half of the work of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Forum, one of the largest malls in the world (43 million annual visitors), now, thirty years after its creation, ageing and poorly adapted.

In addition to the amount provided for by the Protocol, Unbail-Rodamco and AXA, today owners of commercial leases of the Forum, release EUR 25 million for its renovation. This will bring the total amount of their addition to 263 million (171 to Unibail and 92 for AXA). On all of the les Halles site, the city remain however by far the largest funder, with, according to early estimates, a little less of 500 million euros.

Funding in three parts

This memorandum of understanding, which will have to be validated by the Council of Paris, mid-November before his final signature, provides funding in three parts. Unibail-Rodamco acquires first commercial surfaces, the new centre being broader than the previous (EUR 100 million) with the creation of a new building: the "canopy". In the same vein, society is to give local and alleys now tried without interest in the city (20 million). Finally, Unibail was owner of the Mall until 2055, is permanently assign leases building to 102 million euros.

"The city does not have vocation to be owner of commercial spaces, and les Halles will never be anything other than a commercial centre." "We sell in the general interest, as we have for the Beaugrenelle shopping centre", justified Anne Hidalgo, first Deputy Mayor of Paris in charge of urban planning. "It is win-win, because we have not put as much money simply for forty-five years." "We are going to do a great revolution in this Forum, review design, bringing new signs that customers feel better and that they thus want to stay longer," says Guillaume Poitrinal, the President of the Executive Board of Unibail-Rodamco. The operation allows the crossing at the town hall to "put an end to multiple legal entanglements" related to the sharing space in the Forum.

Finally, if profits record merchants, Paris produces a supplementary price of 30 to 50 million euros, a clause which should "make school in further discussion", according to Guillaume Poitrinal. The payment will take place between 2011 and 2016.

Buy-offs traders

The city is its side the main portfolio to compensate Unibail (EUR 75 million) and traders of the nuisances of the work. Came - 5 170 shops of les Halles will be in effect closed permanently and 40 others partially. Town Hall does not hide his satisfaction to be received at this result at the end of a negotiation that it calls itself "tight".

"The summer 2008, with the crisis, the context had become complicated and the value of the land was disturbed." "We have good, because we did not want to sell below the price estimated by France field", said Anne Hidalgo. With this signing, the rehabilitation of the Halles, already deceased in the past of many twists and turns, can move to a new stage. The demolition of the garden has already started, but one of the pavilions will begin and 2011.

First construction contracts will also be launched. The Town Hall, who said "very carefully" the branch employment of the transaction, account insert social clauses into the contracts.