Eaten away by holes and bumps, this slab in Val-d’Oise is going to be rehabilitated

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Swap your tinsel for your Sunday best. Holes, bumps, bricks that give way under the feet of passers-by: in Cergy, the prefecture slab is dying. An inexorable disintegration that the Cergy-Pontoise (Val-d’Oise) urban community, which has the authority to act on the Grand Centre sector, has decided to stop immediately. Before it is too late.

250,000 euros invested

“The project has just been validated, we are going to start renovation work which will consist of filling in all the holes in the passageways,” announced Jean-Paul Jeandon, the PS mayor of Cergy and president of the Cergy-Pontoise urban area.

250,000 euros will be invested by the inter-municipality in this “intermediate rehabilitation” project covering “500 m² ” and aimed at “strengthening accessibility and user comfort”, they say at the town hall whose windows open onto this slab, a symbol of 1970s architecture with too much mineral DNA. The rescue operation, launched at the beginning of October for delivery before the end of the year, will precede a necessary and essential requalification with much thicker contours, the implementation date of which is, to date, not known.

“We have the objective of redoing this slab and planting it, but it costs 6 to 7 million euros according to initial estimates. We will not be able to do it by 2026,” Jean-Paul Jeandon confided a year ago. “In addition, we cannot start renovating the slab before certain projects, such as the former ice rink or the Engie tower, have been completed. This is a major renovation that we must undertake because the waterproofing of the slab must be redone. The first step is to renovate the prefecture station, which will be done in 2025. I would have liked to start work on the slab immediately, but the cost of such a project did not fit into our multi-year investment plan. It is a shame, but we cannot do everything at the same time.”

Emergency

This emergency bandage applied to the wounds of a shaky slab will not be a luxury. You only need to let your gaze wander for a few minutes to realize that this dented forecourt is a real trap for anyone who ventures there without worrying about where they put their feet. Not to mention the not very sexy image it gives off at the very moment when the Grand Centre is engaged in a race for attractiveness, notably embodied by the overhaul of its train station hub.

“I’ve been here for eighteen years, I’ve seen this slab deteriorate over the years. Many people complain and stumble,” says a dejected local shopkeeper.

Inherited from the early days of the New Town, it has seen this good old slab and its prefecture square pass by, well into its 50th year. The logo of the Epa (Public Development Establishment), mandated by the State to roll out the bitumen of the former New Town, is still engraved in its ochre-coloured ground as if time had stood still. The partial renovation, carried out a few years ago, is already a distant memory. One that must be revived without delay, otherwise this slab will be condemned, which is running away to relive the splendour of its youthful years.

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