Jean Castex described it on Monday as “an extremely strong public announcement” by referring to the installation, scheduled for the end of 2026, of 2,500 agents from the Ministry of the Interior in the heart of the Olympic village, in Saint-Denis. These staff, who work in “support functions”, will come more particularly from the Lumière site, located in Paris, in the 12th arrondissement, and whose lease expires at the end of 2023.
Without going into details, the Prime Minister highlighted this relocation of state officials beyond the ring road, during his trip this Monday, in Seine-Saint-Denis, within the framework of the interministerial committee devoted to the Olympic Games. 2024. As “owner and sole occupant”, the Ministry of the Interior will settle in what it calls “the Maxwell campus”, in the athletes’ village. A place which “should be the subject, at the end of 2021, of an acquisition in the future state of completion (VEFA)”, it is specified, in the entourage of Gérald Darmanin.
The campus is a link in the Universeine development project, led by Vinci Immobilier in the Olympic village. It consists entirely of a requalification operation of a former industrial wasteland of 6.4 hectares, with offices, housing and shops. The State is buying new buildings but also two pieces of heritage from the beginning of the 20th century and currently being rehabilitated.
The 1907 industrial hall will house fitness areas
The most notable of the two is the Halle Maxwell, dating from 1907, which served as a thermal power station supplying the northern part of the Paris metropolitan area for several decades. The second old building is the Copernic Pavilion, which was the plant’s “engineers’ house”.
During the Games, the Maxwell Hall will house fitness areas, information and service centers for athletes as well as workspaces for sports delegations. The Copernic Pavilion will house the media.
In the legacy phase, after the Games, according to Vinci Immobilier, the hall will receive all the service spaces of the future tertiary campus (catering, wellness center, etc.) as well as shops. The last point is close to the heart of the city of Saint-Denis, which wants the ground floor of the hall to be open to the inhabitants.
The Ministry of the Interior also recalls that the campus provides “two new buildings, for office use, positioned parallel to the Maxwell hall and connected to it by connectors”. Finally, the Copernic pavilion will also be used as workspaces for State agents. In total, civil servants will occupy 46,000 m², including 32,000 m² in new buildings.
Discussions with the Ministry of the Interior had been underway for several months when the office campus originally interested other investors, who threw in the towel with the Covid-19 crisis.
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