Chaired by Ludovic de Caslou, it celebrates this anniversary on Thursday July 4.
In 2004, a gang of “loustics” decided to wake up a sleeping beauty, the association of the Industrial Zone (ZI) of Saint-Césaire, “fallen into oblivion. We joined forces with a few companies because, although we were the leading economic and industrial zone in Nîmes, with Cacharel for example, road maintenance was neglected, remembers Michel Gabelotaud, then a Renault Trucks dealer. We met Mayor Jean-Paul Fournier to show him our 18-hole golf course!” Translate an avenue Joliot-Curie, main axis, with bitumen deformed by the holes and bumps… This start augured the future missions of this association which, on Thursday July 4 at 6:30 p.m., will officially celebrate, at the Le Fleming brasserie, its twentieth anniversary: “To ensure that the people who work there feel good there”, summarizes the vice-president.
And this well-being will come, still at the dawn of the 2000s, through the installation of nameplates and numbers in the streets and avenues, the introduction of a city bus, the organization of garbage collection, etc. “Today, the ZI is suffering from a thrombosis of the circulation, continues Michel Gabelotaud. To get in, you have to go under a 3-metre high bridge, a bottleneck. We’re going to have a slip road that should see the light of day, I hope, with the Nîmes West bypass.”
This umpteenth fight is led by the current president, Ludovic de Caslou (Baurès company): “We are not a business office. We want to ensure the development of businesses, better service to the area, and act around security. The idea? We meet, we share our difficulties and our projects. During Covid-19, some suffered and we put them in touch with the CCI. We talk with local authorities to move forward together.”
A particularity of the ZI is that it depends on the department, the city and the agglomeration: a requirement “constructive exchanges” to solve the various problems encountered by entrepreneurs. Friday night rodeos, theft of materials, but also the development of the West Gate on the Gare Market site which blocks land… “We have a collective role, not a personal one.” And because unity is strength, 8 local activity zones have chosen to work together within an interprofessional club, Cizan.
The largest industrial zone in the department
It was at the end of the 1950s that a ZAC, an artisanal and commercial zone, grew up in Saint-Césaire, in the middle of agricultural land and wasteland. “There were workshops, warehouses,” remembers Francis Brun.president of the Heritage Association.The Gare Market was built not far away in 1959, during this period of expansion of the city.” Today, the Industrial Zone, its new name, of Saint-Césaire welcomes, on 130 hectares, 250 companies and their 2,200 employees in the sectors of production, wholesale trade, transport, etc. It is the largest in the department.
