The Multinational luxury gives up opening a research center on sustainable luxury on the campus of the Polytechnic School. This is the second real estate project that fails after that of the Totalenergies group in January 2022.
by Marine Miller and Juliette Garnier
Bernard Arnault has decided: the Research and Innovation Center on Sustainable Luxury will not be located in the field of the Polytechnic School Innovation Park. In a letter dated January 13 addressed to the mayor of Palaiseau, Grégoire de Lasteryrie, and to the director general of EPAPS (public establishment for the development of the Paris-Saclay plateau), Philippe Van de Maele, the CEO of the LVMH group announces that “it is today towards a land located outside the Palaiseau-Saclay plateau and the perimeter of the EPA-PS that our preference is going” without this decision “calls into question the research partnership discussed with the ‘École Polytechnique “.
This decision comes when the school board of directors had voted in favor of the project on November 8 by nineteen votes out of a total of 24 voting members. The green light opened the way for the sale of this 30,000-meter land located east of the school by EPA-PS to the luxury group. By 2026, LVMH wanted to create a building of 22,000 square meters to house 300 researchers by allocating more than 100 million euros in investment.
Without giving the reasons for this change of course, Bernard Arnault recalls in his letter consulted by MO12345lemonde that the land “located at the tip of the innovation park of the Polytechnic school suited him well and that the positive vote of the CA of the school was undoubtedly very good news “.
Two appeals
The luxury group had come up against a shield raising a few months before the holding of this advice. A survey of the last three students’ promotions (approximately 1,600 people contacted, 55 % of respondents) at the end of October, showed that the implementation project was perceived as very “divisive”. Among the “weak” points cited by the students: “the association of the image of LVMH with that of the X” (67 %), the “lack of general interest in the project” (66 %) and ” the final installation “(63 %) of a company on campus.
The collective “Polytechnique is not for sale!” Created by former students criticized on its website the lack “of scientific interest of the project, its inadequacy with the values of the establishment and the loss of land resources Strategic for the Polytechnic School for the benefit of a private company “. And, in the wake of the council of November 8, the association had filed two appeals against this decision before the administrative court of Versailles, to obtain the cancellation of the decision of the board of directors for vice of information from administrators and not -Plestabilities of preliminary consultation procedures.
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