Faced with the general hostility of the elected officials, Matignon abandons the sale to the Altarea Cogedim promoter of the pedagogical and agricultural site that welcomes AgroParistech, in the Yvelines.
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No need to be stupid and go to a “fiasco programmed”, especially in full presidential campaign. Alerted on all sides on the risks of a very controversial operation, the Government officially renounced, Monday, November 15, to privatize in the immediate future the field of Grignon (Yvelines), this cradle of French agronomy which currently welcomes L Agroparistech engineering school. A bit like he had abandoned at the end of 2019 the gigantic leisure and commercial website envisaged in the “Gonesse Triangle” (Val-d’Oise).
Three and a half months after announcing the sale of grinkle to the Altarea Cogedim real estate developer, the state thus calls into question the project that it had chosen after having drawn the contours for a long time. “It is not possible to maintain the committed procedure,” a statement of the Yvelines prefecture recognizes. A new “transfer procedure” will be launched “in the second half of 2022”, simply specifies the prefecture. This refers the final decision – privatize or not, how, and for the benefit of who – to the government that will come from the elections of the spring 2022. “We take note of the decision of the State”, curtly reacted Altarea Cogedim Monday. This discount brands the failure of a privatization that, for months, raised more and more opposition.
Everything has left the willingness to consolidate the four Agro-SiteTech sites scattered in Ile-de-France into a single campus, on the Saclay Plateau (Essonne), an “area of excellence” in terms of research. Launched in 2008 under Nicolas Sarkozy, the project is then validated by the teams of François Hollande then Emmanuel Macron. The sale of the Parisian site of Claude-Bernard and Grignon must finance the installation at Saclay.
An emblematic folder
It is in this context that the State organizes in 2020 a call for tenders to yield grinkle, a vast and beautiful area which, about twenty kilometers of Versailles, includes a castle of the XVII e Century, 130 hectares of agricultural land, and more than 133 hectares of wood. Four candidates respond, and at the end of July, the offer of Altarea Cogedim, estimated at 18 million euros, is retained. The promoter plans to build on-site a hundred housing, a retirement home, a residence for the elderly, and to welcome seminars and various events in the castle, registered for historical monuments.
But over time, this scenario causes growing reluctance. Students, alumni rise to the niche, and the site is blocked three weeks. Environmentalists shout at “concrete” of an emblematic domain, while on the contrary, agricultural land should be preserved and improve the food autonomy of Ile-de-France. The Communists and France unsuitable see it a new gift made to the “thirsty promoters of land and public goods”. The right and local elected officials also mobilize against a project dictated by the direction of real estate from the state, from Bercy, without associating them. Even before the award of the contract, the senator (the Republicans, LR) Sophie Primas warned the Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie: “Attention, this file is emblematic of all that is criticized to Macronie: we say Let us listen to the territories, and we do the opposite. “The President (LR) of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, seized Jean Castex on his side.
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