The big boss of the Champs-Elysées, Jean-Noël Reinhardt announced it to his team this weekend.
He resigned from his post as head of the Champs-Elysées committee.
At almost 70 years old, he prefers to leave it to a future president to work on the vast renovation plan of the avenue, of which he has outlined.
Fourteen years after your arrival at the head of the Champs-Elysées committee, why are you handing over?
JEAN-NOEL REINHARDT.
I will resign on June 16 at the board meeting.
I was elected in 2007 when I was president of Virgin.
I was re-elected in 2012 and 2017 until June 2022. But I'm going to be 70 in a month.
I think I have had my time.
It's up to the new team to launch the sequel.
Does the moment seem badly chosen when everything remains to be done?
The committee is a 104-year-old association that brings together residents of the avenue.
In 2007, there were 80 members.
Today, we are 180. When I took the committee, it was an association of traders.
Now, it has become an association of all the big players on the avenue, all the cultural institutions, all the museums, all the theaters, all the big landlords and businesses.
It is the synthesis of the general interest.
With a board of directors of twenty members in which my successor can be found without any difficulty, I leave with the serenity of someone who has done the job.
What conclusions do you draw from these 14 years?
We have become the interlocutor of all the supervisory authorities: arrondissement, City of Paris and State with regard to the Champs.
Second point: we have reformulated a vision of the avenue for the decades to come, with our project Re-enchant the Champs-Elysées.
Precisely, have you not gone beyond your skills by offering the City a pharaonic project costing 150 million euros?
I'm glad we picked up a question that no one had been addressing until now.
When we launched our first conference in 2014 with Jean-Paul Viguier, a great architect and urban planner, on a projection of the future of the Champs-Elysées, according to the municipal team at the time, it was up to the merchants to pay.
In 2021, the City endorsed our vision which recommends going back to basics, creating fluidity between the Tuileries garden and the avenue, greening the Champs and making it a pleasant walk.
As it stands, is the avenue des Champs-Elysées still the most beautiful in the world?
No one has ever heard me say that.
But it is with certainty a mythical avenue that makes people dream all over the world.
It is charged with three centuries of history.
But we see, in fact, that this myth is superior to reality.
This is why we must return to the height of this dream lost for several decades.
Are you hopeful that all or part of the avenue will regain its luster?
The study work that we did lasted two years.
We organized an exhibition at the Arsenal pavilion.
And 100,000 Parisians, during a popular consultation, gave their opinion on what should be the Champs.
I do not imagine that the elected officials, the mayor of Paris, can not engage in a path acclaimed at this point.
For me, there is no doubt.
Emmanuel Grégoire, Anne Hidalgo's first deputy, in charge of town planning and the mayor, spoke out on this project which will run over 7 to 8 years.
The bottom of the Champs will be redeveloped by the 2024 Olympic Games. The bulk of the work at the top will begin at the end of 2024.
And who will pay?
The planning of public space is the responsibility of the communities.
We funded a study that cost 1 million euros.
If the City asks us to help it, we will look with kindness.
Jean-Noël Reinhardt, after 14 years at the head of the Champs-Elysées committee, resigns in order to allow the future team to launch "a new cycle" of the renovation of the avenue.
Eric Le Mitouard
Luxury has taken over the avenue.
How do you judge this development?
The Champs offer is not luxury but premium: that is to say, major French, European or global brands, which come to an avenue and offer the best in the world.
There is Apple.
There is Nike which made its biggest flag ship, Pierre Hermé, soon Lacoste.
They are iconic brands.
Luxury only represents ten addresses out of 90 shops.
Millennials, these young people under 30, who come from Europe, Asia, South America or Eastern countries go here.
Because it is their universe.
It is an additional clientele for all these brands.
But Parisians are deserting ...
There are three important developments.
In the 1980s, the arrival of the RER made it possible to come from everywhere.
In 1993, Jacques Chirac, then mayor, widened the sidewalks by removing the back alley.
It suddenly increases pedestrian traffic tenfold.
Finally, the development of low cost airlines has brought in visitors from all over the world.
The Parisians then deserted the avenue.
Our project is to do everything to ensure that Parisians reclaim the Champs-Elysées because it will be a preserved, green place where they will feel good.
The Champs have been at the heart of many crises, such as that of the yellow vests.
Images have traveled the world.
Can we make them forget?
We have to take responsibility for our history.
The Champs-Elysées is the place of celebration: of the Liberation, the victory of the Football World Cup, and, each year, 500,000 to 600,000 people joyfully come to celebrate the transition to the New Year.
And there, people came to show their anger.
But they made a mistake: they thought they were coming to a place of the rich.
But the Champs are deeply popular.
The Covid crisis has struck here perhaps more than elsewhere.
Do you see the revival?
For five years, the avenue has been hard hit by the 2015 attacks, the yellow vests for 18 months and the Covid crisis for 15 months.
The Champs took the blows.
And at the same time, there is an in-depth movement: the attraction for this place has grown.
All the work that you see today proves it.
It is the preparation for the acceleration of the move upmarket in the years to come.
Restoration Hardware will open.
Dior will open as well as Yves Saint-Laurent on several hundred m2.
Louis Vuitton is going to redo its store.
The Galeries Lafayette are there.
Lacoste is going to come to a large store.
All the owners are modernizing their commercial tool to give operating comfort to the major global brands.
What is your dearest wish for the action of your successor?
After the time for studies and preparation, I hope that now a new president will successfully launch the new cycle of transformation of the Champs-Elysées which will last ten years.
The ten highlights of his mandate
2007.
LEDs are introduced in the illuminations of the Champs-Elysées "and we reduce electricity consumption by 90%", indicates Jean-Noël Reinhardt.
2008
.
First Christmas market on the Champs, open for six years “and which brought 10 million people to the bottom of the Champs”.
August 11, 2009.
The Champs-Elysées are classified as an international tourist zone which allows all shops to open on Sundays.
2010.
Organization with Gad Weil nature capital "which allows Parisians to come to a large garden on the avenue".
2014.
First edition, with the City of Paris, of the end-of-year festivities "with 500,000 to 600,000 Parisians".
2015.
First Sunday pedestrianization, “with the reappropriation by Parisians”.
2016
.
First pedestrian Sunday events: the drone race, the L'Oréal parade
April 20, 2017.
Xavier Jugélé, the murdered policeman on the Champs-Elysées left his mark on the history of the avenue.
"It hurt us a lot."
2018.
The yellow vests attack the avenue.
2020.
100,000 Parisians and Ile-de-France residents give their vision of what the Champs should be after the “Réenchanter les Champs” conferences in 2007 and 2019.
