Cn Monday morning, Place Gambetta wakes up in peace. Far from the din that, on Thursday, September 19, assaulted passers-by and local residents, while on the right of the facade of the former Virgin Megastore, jackhammers destroyed a concrete slab, poured the day before. Behind a fence, now dismantled, was then the prelude to a huge construction site: the transformation of the former store, closed since 2013, into a luxury hotel.
A “social, cultural and festive entertainment project in symbiosis with the expectations of the people of Bordeaux”
Problem, on September 18, the Bordeaux city hall informed SNC Gambetta Revival, one of Michel Ohayon’s companies, that it would not grant it the new building permit for the said hotel, filed at the end of last winter. Reason given by Stéphane Pfeiffer: “it does not comply with the Bordeaux Safeguarding and Development Plan”. The resilient deputy mayor in charge of urban planning explains that the document aims, among other things, to “preserve retail” on the ground floor of the facade, while “Mr. Pétuaud-Létang’s project, which is rather qualitative”, he emphasizes, installs “the hotel entrance and a restaurant” there.
“Inconceivable and irresponsible”
“The town hall is talking nonsense,” Michel Pétuaud-Létang fumes. The architect and long-time accomplice of the Bordeaux businessman assures that “there is no restaurant downstairs, but that it is located at the very top, like in the days of the Virgin,” in this building’s rehabilitation program, which plans to reconfigure the building to its original state.
In this project for which Michel Ohayon has signed an agreement with a hotel partner, at most, it seems, a bar and a room for breakfasts served by the hotel (1) are planned at street level, which would be complemented by luxury boutiques. The hotel part will develop around thirty high-end rooms, in a slightly lower standard than the Intercontinental Grand Hotel, also owned by Michel Ohayon. Enough to “offer a complementary offer”, judges Patrick Seguin, president of the Bordeaux-Gironde CCI…
“This new project does not seem to us to meet the tourist needs of the city”
“I have no doubt that this is a material error on the part of the City of Bordeaux, and I have no doubt that it will be corrected shortly,” says Michel Ohayon confidently, assuring that discussions with the City and the architect are still ongoing. The opposite would be, in his eyes, “inconceivable and irresponsible.”
Refusing to “imagine for a moment that there is a political decision or maneuver behind this”, the businessman defends his Lifestyle hotel project “having a social, cultural and festive animation objective, in symbiosis with the expectations of the people of Bordeaux”. And which according to him “is cruelly lacking in the heart of the city of Bordeaux”.
The president of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and Industry views this project favorably, especially since “there is still a lack of high-end overnight accommodation capacity in the city” and such an establishment “will generate economic benefits for everyone, like boats”. An opinion that Stéphane Pfeiffer does not share. The deputy mayor relies on “the master plan for the development of tourist accommodation”, which “rather shows a lack of 2 or 3 star hotels”. For him, “this new project does not seem to us to meet the tourist needs of the city”.
Popular place
Even though Stéphane Pfeiffer denies “judging the opportunity of the project” and assures that the refusal of the new building permit is based “on the regulations, otherwise we would have had prior appeals”, the City has never hidden its desire to give back to the Place Gambetta, renovated in 2011, a popular dimension. “The mayor had indicated this very clearly to Mr. Ohayon when he met him two years ago”, even going so far as to write to him, recalls the deputy for urban planning. It would now be desirable for part of the surface area of the former Virgin to be dedicated to the social and solidarity economy, without forgetting to integrate social housing.
If this request can be understood, given the delay of the City in terms of social housing, “it cannot be viable for such a project”, analyzes Patrick Seguin, “unless the city hall buys the premises”. The president of the CCI considers “these new conditions all the more harsh, as they arrive just at the moment when things were getting going again”. Michel Ohayon has, according to him, “sold personal assets in France and abroad to regain control of this building, where everything is to be demolished”. And in which none of the five investors with whom he was in contact in June 2023 followed up. At the same time, the businessman in difficulty “filled all the boxes of the calendar of the safeguard procedure”, assures the consular elected official.
“We had until September 22 to prepare the new building permit,” the city argued. Because in such a case, “many departments, from the fire brigade to Bâtiments de France, must be consulted.”
Let us recall that after the purchase of the building at 15 Place Gambetta in July 2015, Michel Ohayon, via SCN Gambetta Revival, was issued a building permit in July 2021 for the “renovation of a commercial building”. A document that became void this summer. It was noted that no work had been started during the three years the permit was valid. Regretting having had to “wait for a much too long examination of the previous 18-month permit for a department store brand”, and justifying the repositioning of the project due to “the crisis following this paralysis”, Michel Ohayon now aspires to “no longer have to fight against Cassandras. And simply move forward”, without “this mistake [n’entache] the tight timing of this operation.”
(1) Despite a request made to the city’s land use law services, we were unable to access the building permit application.
