Four levels underground, it is an enormous plateau awaiting its resurrection, under several apartment buildings in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
“It was closed and condemned more than fifteen years ago,” explains David Mégrier, director of the 3F agency in Paris.
Within a year, the level will have been refitted, secured and transformed into storage space.
For the social landlord, this is a first step in logistics.
READ ALSO>
Real estate: "Containment has accelerated urban logistics needs"
“What is the point of building new spaces when it suffices to transform those we already have?
»Asks Laure Courty.
At the head of Je stocke, she is in charge of the project which will take place in the parking lot of 3F, and another at Paris-Habitat, which the start-up will be managing.
These spaces will allow individuals, but especially professionals, to store as close as possible to their activity, in the city.
"Prevent trucks from entering the cities"
Bringing logistics into the city is a major challenge.
"Containment has accelerated this need," explains Alexandre Fraigneau, head of the logistics department at Savills.
We all ordered on the Internet, all needed to be delivered quickly, during the day, in 24, 48 or 72 hours.
»Networking the territory makes it possible to meet this imperative.
But this is not the only goal, specifies the expert: “It is to allow green delivery, via cargo bikes for example, and to prevent trucks from entering the cities.
"
"Considering the price of land, the mix of logistics with housing, commerce and offices is necessary in the city", explains Jonathan Sebbane, general manager of Sogaris.
This logistics specialist in Greater Paris started in 2013 by installing 3,500 square meters under the Beaugrenelle slab in the 15th arrondissement for parcel preparation.
"We have the will to reproduce what we did there," reveals Jonathan Sebbane.
The company is looking for vacant spaces, particularly with social landlords.
Unused land rights-of-way
With an important urban network, 250,000 housing units scattered throughout the capital, social landlords are proving to be partners of choice for the entry into town of logistics.
"They, but also all state or public structures, have strategic locations in cities, with extraordinary land holdings, sometimes unused", summarizes Alexandre Fraigneau.
"The regulations required building one or two parking spaces per unit, but today, fewer and fewer people have a car and we end up with empty spaces," notes Laure Courty.
Since August 2019, and the publication of a decree in the Official Journal, donors have been able to store something other than vehicles in their parking lots: an opportunity for them to make profitable empty spaces and to derive income from them.
3F intends to set up a logistics activity here.
/ LP / Aubin Laratte
For 3F, the logistics project in the XIXth arrondissement is the keystone of a much larger project: that of securing the parking lot, started in 2019 with a large-scale police operation to kick out squatters and traffickers, after a murder in the underground a few months earlier.
A secure airlock fitted out and around fifty cameras installed later, the lessor now wants to play on the flows so as not to leave any respite to those who would be tempted to settle there.
The essential of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
"By creating traffic and traffic, we will dissuade people from settling there," explains David Mégrier.
The boss of the 3F Agency in Paris is already seeing the next step.
The cellars, also plagued by squats and trafficking until their closure ten years ago, could be the next ones.
David Mégrier smiles: “We can very well imagine renting them out as storage spaces.
"
From trade to logistics, social landlords are diversifying
They rent their roofs to install telephone antennas or solar panels, their facades for advertising, their ground floors to set up shops, their parking spaces for external customers… “It's not about economic diversification, because all this does not represent a great deal in relation to rents, explains Christian Harcouët, general secretary of the Valophis Group.
We are on the optimization of square meters.
"
But beware, “if they improve the situation a little,” explains Christian Harcouët, “these optimizations do not offset the rent levies put in place by the State because they are of a much lower amount.
These "optimizations" are all the more welcome when the housing is new, not yet profitable, and the vacancy is at the origin.
This can be the case with car parks. "This poses less of a problem when the work is already paid for, but it is money that we do not earn either," confirms another donor. And although we use the car less and less, "today we are still obliged to build parking lots with our buildings", explains Christian Harcouët. Many lessors now rent their parking spaces through applications such as Yespark or Zenpark. “The cost price of a parking space is 10,000 euros on average, more if you have to dig in the water,” explains Christian Harcouët. These are therefore non-negligible costs and must be amortized over time. All that is not rented is money lost. "