“It was a cesspool!” » How did the Rives d’Arcins shopping center, in Bègles, become a “green window on the Garonne”?

Curious team. In the low light of a December morning, the Garonne can be seen at the end of a paved path. Opposite, the island of Arcins displays its abundant vegetation. Perfectly bucolic decor, just disturbed by the murmur of the ring road, up there on the François-Mitterrand bridge. We almost forget, behind us, the “Fleuve” gate, a monumental entrance to the Rives d'Arcins shopping center in Bègles, whose glass-roofed gallery leads to a no less imposing Zara store. Between the banks accessible to walkers or barges and the 87,000 m² of commercial space on the site, there is only one step and, moreover, the fate of one is linked to the other.

The “Parc des Berges”, as it has been called since 2013, is undoubtedly not the most popular in Bègles, because it is sandwiched between the waste incineration plant and the commercial area. It nonetheless constitutes the culmination of a claimed return to the river. At the helm is Noël Mamère, a very young Green mayor elected in 1989 and the first supporter of the shopping center project at the turn of the 1990s. But what was the green elected official to do in such a commercial development project, without having a conscience a few hectares of wet meadows?

“The Samaritan of Waste”

“It was a cesspool,” describes Nordine Kaci, key boss of Pénalty, a bar-brasserie in Bègles. “The trucks emptied everything, waste from businesses, stores. And we, the young people, between 10 and 15 years old, were going to search, recover everything that was sellable. We paddled on a DS hood, we spent extraordinary days there. The Samaritan of Waste. Like in Labarde”, on the other side of Bordeaux, downstream, where the urban waste was buried until 1984.

Assuming “the contradiction”, he would say years later, Noël Mamère looked favorably on the arrival of this shopping center in the slums of Béglais, while demanding compensation, notably the development of two kilometers of banks between the esteys of Franc and Tartifume. “We had to find the means to finance this green window on the Garonne, that is to say, return Bègles to the water,” he argued in “Sud Ouest” in November 1990. “We could continue to develop this industrial zone which only has the name even if it includes very successful companies. Or change the zoning and introduce commercial activities. This is the choice I made. »

open war

The “choice” of the “Bègles-Garonne” operation does not go without difficulty: a jumble, open war between the major retail brands, between Auchan, first announced, and Carrefour, which will win, controversy between ecologists after the discovery of clinker buried on site, and chabanist tensions within the Urban Community of Bordeaux, owner of the land purchased for 25 million euros (six million euros taking into account of inflation) by a mixed economy company, in 1994, bringing together the town hall of Bègles and the investor. The work begins immediately.

Today, we no longer present the Rives d'Arcins, a shopping center opened in September 1995, extending over 13,500 m² in 2010, operated by Klépierre, owned by an American real estate company number 1 worldwide in the sector. One hundred and fifty brands and 1,200 employees, including hypermarket and outdoor stores, 4,200 parking spaces, all for “six million visitors per year” claimed. The artificialization of land is what it is, imposing, like shopping centers. And yet, the Rives d'Arcins have always prided themselves on ecology, or rather sustainable development: silo parking, green spaces and financing for the rehabilitation of the banks.

New generation

Rehabilitation which, in fact, was linked to the arrival of a marina in 2000, the opening of restaurants, including Pavillon Garonne, installed for twenty-five years, with a front-row view of the river, the reconversion of the Blériot hangars, named after the aviator, into a business school or the restoration of a small string of squares. And if online commerce does not spare shopping centers, the future of the model perhaps lies a little further, upstream of the Garonne, on the Villenave-d'Ornon side, where a new generation shopping zone is in progress. construction course.

A sign of the times, the Domaine de Geneste aims to be multifunctional, between offices, a leisure complex, a restaurant hall and, by 2034, new housing, garden city style, without forgetting “open-air spaces” and plant “corridors”. A project led by Nodi, property owner of the Mulliez family (Auchan, Decathlon) who will have seized the second (green) shooting window.