Thousands of mattresses, pillows, tables, sports equipment… the Olympic village of Saint-Denis is almost half dismantled and its furniture is heading for a second life, the organizers explained on Thursday.
Furniture and mattresses will be donated to Emmaus in particular. “54,000 pieces of furniture”, “9,000 mattresses”, “11,000 pillows”explained a representative of the CMA CGM foundation, Marion Dupuy during a video press conference, which will ensure transport logistics via 420 trucks. “This represents one to two years of donations”explained Gwendoline Lafarge, Olympic project manager for Emmaüs Défi, citing 1,700 duvets.
Mattress supplier Airweave recalled that the 16,000 mattresses in the athletes’ village and the media village will go to the army, the Paris Opera school and the Tsuji hotel school, among others. Olympic Village director Laurent Michaud recalled that the village, which hosted more than 14,000 people at the height of the summer, closed on September 10 and that the keys must be handed over to the developers at the end of October.
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Temporary infrastructure such as the reception centre or the multi-faith centre in the Olympic village, located across Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and Île-Saint-Denis, must also be dismantled, Mr. Michaud said. “800 people are currently working” on dismantling, with a flow of 40 trucks daily, and more unusual “A team of 10 people takes inventory of the 45,000 keys” from the village. For his part, Pierre Cifarelli, head of a solidarity company based in Aubervilliers, will collect construction materials from the village and “find a new use”notably “several tons of metal structure from the catering hall”of the “acoustic shade cloths” which will be offered to a company that creates “outdoor poufs”or even “thousands of square meters of wooden floors”.
The developers, who have already started marketing the apartments, have some redevelopment to do. The Olympic Works Delivery Company (Solideo) is coordinating this phase. “legacy”. “We are leaving for 14 months to ensure the full reconversion of the urban project”with public spaces and the transformation of buildings, explained Henri Specht who supervised the construction of the village for Solideo before handing over the keys to the organizing committee (Cojo) at the beginning of March. “We will maintain high security standards” on the construction site, he assured. The first inhabitants of this new district “should arrive in fall 2025”he clarified.
