“This extension at sea (…) embodies my vision, that of a principality which dares, which embraces audacity, which controls its destiny with wisdom, which knows how to listen to the environment”, declared Prince Albert II, surrounded by his family and actors in this private project worth more than two billion euros, launched in 2015.
The princely family then surveyed the new district, singularly green and elegant in an area where real estate pressure had led, in recent decades, to the haphazard erection of tall, not always graceful, towers.
Cramped over two square kilometers between the sea and the mountains, Monaco had already gained 40 hectares from the sea in seven previous extensions since 1907, more than half of which in the 1960s with the Fontvieille district, where the Louis stadium is located. II.
But the Mareterra site has no equivalent, even in the Middle East, given the depth of the structure, which goes down to 50 meters, and the seismic or environmental constraints.
“Between Fontvieille and Mareterra, there is the same technological leap as between a landline dial telephone and an iPhone 15,” assured Guy-Thomas Levy-Soussan, managing director of Anse du Portier, promoter of the project.
Up to 120,000 euros per square meter
Bringing together around ten families with powerful names in Monaco, starting with Patrice Pastor, the man whose influence continues to grow on the Rock, Anse du Portier has focused on luxury and space, aimed at the handful of ultra-rich who will settle there in the coming days and the many expected visitors.
The site is supported by 18 enormous concrete caissons which demarcate a new coastline. The interior was filled with sand and consolidated with more than a thousand large piles 45 meters high.
On this land, the new district, entrusted to the Valode et Pistre Architectes firm, in partnership with the Italian Renzo Piano, includes 120 apartments of a minimum of 400 m2 and ten villas, extremely rare properties in Monaco which have sold very well . According to a government source, prices went up to 120,000 euros per square meter.
The project also represented a windfall for the Monegasque government, which recovered several public works (a car park, conference rooms, walking areas, etc.) and significant tax revenues.
In September, the Minister of Finance, Pierre-André Chiappori, explained that with the end of the project, the state budget would lose 200 million euros in annual tax revenue.
Enough to whet the appetite for new projects? For the moment, it's no: “Other extensions are not possible or desirable, for the moment,” declared the prince in his speech.
Environmental measures
“The sovereign is careful to ensure that the development of the principality is sustainable and has the least impact. Obviously, when we talk about extension at sea, it is not without consequences,” explained Céline Caron-Diagioni, Minister of Equipment, Environment and Town Planning.
For Mareterra, promoters and government insisted on the environmental measures put in place throughout the project, with for example the movement of 500 m2 of Posidonia meadows, this plant which serves as a nursery for fish and a carbon sink, the treatment of polluted sediments or the development of caissons so that marine life can appropriate them.
