Lhe secret was well kept. At the heart of the end-of-year celebrations, the municipal executive and businessman Michel Ohayon agreed on the future of the former Virgin Megastore on Place Gambetta, in Bordeaux. As part of a new project, including a very chic hotel, a restaurant but now also two commercial premises on the ground floor, a building permit was signed at the end of December by Mayor Pierre Hurmic. Twelve years after the closure of the Virgin, a new future finally offers itself to the emblematic building which had also hosted a “Spring” until the end of the 1980s. “The work will begin very soon”, announced the elected environmentalist , this Monday, January 20 in the evening, during a ceremony of greetings to traders. “The people of Bordeaux will once again be able to access its terrace”, which offers a bird’s eye view of the heart of Bordeaux.
The tormented history of the ex-Virgin de Bordeaux, Place Gambetta
New twist in the (very) long series of the history of the emblematic Bordeaux building closed since 2013: the town hall refuses to grant the building permit to turn it into a luxury hotel-restaurant. Did you know? Before the ex-Virgin, it housed two other department stores since the 19th century, the Magasin vert and the Printemps, the traces of which disappeared in a fire
Work will therefore be able to resume on Place Gambetta, four months after being stopped suddenly. At the very beginning of last autumn, after a few initial jackhammer blows, the town hall refused to grant the previous building permit on the grounds that it did not respect the Bordeaux Protection and Development Plan aimed in particular at to preserve “retail trade”. In the new version, two premises will be reserved for the establishment of new businesses. “It is essential that this central building regains its role as a commercial locomotive,” said Pierre Hurmic.
Merchant Support
This allowed us to illustrate the support that the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) and the town hall wish to provide to traders, in an unprecedented formula of wishes shared between the mayor and President Patrick Seguin, at the Palais de la Bourse. As a duo, therefore, they wanted to recall their concern for a sector representing 41,000 jobs and more than 9,000 companies, which is subject to a “complex situation”, hit by a succession of crises, the geopolitical context and the “French [qui] prefer to save rather than spend.
- Claude Petit / SO
The president of the Bordeaux-Gironde CCI Patrick Seguin and the mayor Pierre Hurmic, this Monday evening, during their joint wishes to traders.
Faced with these difficulties, the boss of the CCI, who will end his mandate in 2026 (the year of the municipal elections), announced the creation of a department dedicated to commercial animation. Led by Hervé Turpin (who was once responsible for the development of trade within the consular chamber), this entity will be responsible for strengthening actions aimed at traders, “by accentuating field visits and providing 360-degree support 'all of their projects'.
Describing commerce as the “beating heart of the city”, Pierre Hurmic also insisted on the fierce competition from online sales. “We have a fight to fight together,” he said, recalling certain future developments aimed at boosting commercial dynamism such as the project to requalify the alleys of Tourny or the continuation of the Canopia project and its new pedestrian and commercial artery. connecting Saint-Jean station and the banks of the Garonne.
