The deadline is getting closer. After seven years of construction, Emmanuel Macron inaugurates the Olympic village in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) on Thursday February 29, five months before the Paris Olympics (July 26-August 11). This complex will accommodate nearly 14,500 athletes with their staff. LThe keys to this village will be handed over to the organizers, in the presence of Emmanuel Macron, whose last visit to the site dates back to October 2021. “Tomorrow, I will inaugurate the Olympic and Paralympic village which, beyond its ambition to provide an optimal welcome to the athletes, will become, in the aftermath of the Games, a real piece of the city for the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis”he wrote Wednesday evening on his X account. Follow our live stream.
A gigantic complex. The village brings together some 82 buildings, 3,000 apartments and 7,200 rooms on a site which extends over 52 hectares between Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis Island and Saint-Ouen, north of Paris. Apart from a delay estimated at “a few weeks” by the president of the Olympic Works Delivery Company (Solideo), Nicolas Ferrand, for the buildings located on Saint-Denis Island, the planned delivery schedule was met.
The work is not finished. To be able to accommodate the 206 Olympic delegations, the organizers will now have to equip the apartments and set up the service centers for the athletes. “This represents more than 345,000 pieces in total which will be transported. Duvets, bedside tables, beds (there will be 14,250), 8,200 fans and 5,535 sofas”explains Laurent Michaud, director of the Olympic and Paralympic villages at the Paris 2024 organizing committee.
A “masterpiece” of the French construction industry. The Olympic Village is “the masterpiece of what the construction industry can do in France”, believes, on franceinfo, Nicolas Ferrand, the general director of Solideo. The difficulties linked to Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine have led to an upward revision of the company’s budget, with an increase of 140 million euros in 2022, amounting to almost 4.5 billion euros.