His voice no longer resonates in the corridors of the city hall of Lyon (Rhône). But his memory will no doubt remain there forever. Because, like Édouard Herriot before him, Francisque Collomb — a namesake — or Raymond Barre, Gérard Collomb, who died on Saturday, November 25 at the age of 76, mayor of Lyon from 2001 to July 2017, then returned to local affairs between November 2018 and March 2020 (after an interim at the Ministry of the Interior), left his mark on the city of Lyon.
Born in Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône-et-Loire) in 1947, the son of a worker and a housekeeper, and an associate professor of classics, Gérard Collomb entered Lyon politics at the end of the 1970s.
Close to the ideas of Pierre Mauroy, a figure of socialism, he was elected for the first time to the municipal council in March 1977. With glasses and a small moustache, shy or even introverted, it is difficult to imagine this man as a future mayor for Lyon. However, Gérard Collomb already had clear ideas and a strong ambition at the time. It took him twenty-four years, a long period of failures and successes (a term as a deputy between 1 and 981 and a senatorial seat from 1), before he reached the goal he had set for himself: to conquer the capital of the Gauls.
"I have a passion for this city"
An unsuccessful candidate in the municipal elections of 1989 and 1995, Gérard Collomb ended up being elected mayor of Lyon in 2001 by a hair's breadth under the noses of Michel Mercier (UDF) and Charles Millon (DLC). He was confirmed in office in 2008 and 2014, this time with a vote of the electorate. A builder, Gérard Collomb was able to transform Lyon in three terms at the head of the city.
The people of Lyon owe him the development of the banks of the Rhône, the deployment of the Vélo'v self-service bicycle network in 2005, the rehabilitation of the Grand Hôtel-Dieu (the former hospital transformed into the Cité de la gastronomie, hotel and shopping mall), the construction of numerous and imposing office buildings in the Part-Dieu and Gerland business districts, and the revival of the Confluence district: a 150-hectare site located in the south of the peninsula that symbolises Lyon's urban renewal, undoubtedly the biggest construction site and the greatest success of the Collomb era.
Au Parisien - Today in France, the Lyon mayor confided in 2018, after resigning from the Ministry of the Interior, all his impatience to find his city of Lyon and his mayor's chair: "Lyon, it's capital for me. I have a passion for this city that, in just a few years, we have transformed. With the industrial crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, some districts of Lyon had become real industrial wastelands. I have focused on bringing businesses back, reviving these neighbourhoods, and revitalizing our economy by focusing on innovation. »
A return to the roots of the "prodigal son", as he had once nicknamed himself, which did not however go as he had imagined, as Lyon fell into the hands of the elected ecologists two years later.