Its white walls lined with green are now graying and tagged all over. However, the site of the former Chancerelle factory, located a stone's throw from the port of Rosmeur, in Douarnenez (Finistère) remains emblematic in the eyes of the "penn sardins" ("sardine head" in Breton, the nickname of the Douarnenistes). But, since its official closure in 2015, which saw the departure of some 600 employees of Chancerelle (“Connétable” brand) to the Lannugat area, in a much more modern factory, at the gates of the city, the plans to make it relive, in one way or another, came together... without success.
The latest, the Bouygues Immobilier solution, has just fallen through. The developer obtained, in October 2023, a building permit with the objective of developing a vast real estate project including in particular an 88-unit senior residence (with the Toulouse company Les Senioriales). But the project has just been abandoned, due to “additional costs linked to probable archaeological excavations and decontamination and asbestos removal”, according to the newspaper Le Télégramme. The announcement fell this Tuesday, April 9, 2024.
The list of aborted projects for the old factory is growing. The first to be interested in the subject was none other than Stéphanie Stein, a Parisian lawyer who arrived in Douarnenez in 2018 and who wanted to transform these 7000m² into a giant cultural space devoted to digital art, “La Maison des Lumières”. An ambitious project which encountered general discontent and a lack of financial partners. The former business lawyer then set her sights on the Abri du Marin, another emblematic building of the city, which suffered a similar fate. She resold it in 2022 for almost a million euros even though she bought it back for 290,000 euros without having carried out the planned work.
In March 2021, it was the entrepreneur Jean-Pierre Le Goff, owner, among others, of the Faïencerie Henriot in Quimper, but also of the Sibiril shipyard in Carantec, who acquired the factory from the family Chancerelle, for €300,000. Its objective at the time: to develop part of the activities of its holding company, Ciranoé, in particular those linked to the maritime sector, in this case the use and recovery of marine drones. Alas, these activities ended up being refocused around Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) and the former factory remained unoccupied again. It was then that the entrepreneur approached Bouygues Immobilier. We now know the end of the decidedly very short story.
What should we do now with this immense wasteland which, according to our information, has not seen any major work since 2015? In Douarnenez, the 14,000 inhabitants have no shortage of ideas: a new performance hall (the MJC is still very active but relatively cramped)? A sardine and canning museum? A cultural and associative space? But everything is at a standstill: if Jean-Pierre Le Goff still owns the place, the projects do not seem to be moving forward at the moment. “We will have to see who is interested and to do what,” notes Jocelyne Poitevin, mayor of Douarnenez and president of Douarnenez Community. It is still too early. If we had to buy the premises, we would have to pay 1.2 million euros... an amount that we do not have.”
She doesn't want a big theater. “This disproportionate project does not correspond to the needs of Douarnenez,” believes Jocelyne Poitevin. Quimper (about thirty kilometers away, editor's note) is equipped and will soon have a large room costing 32 million euros. » ). The mayor of Douarnenez is more sensitive to other proposals, such as “an audiovisual center for cinema professionals”.
The mayor of Douarnenez wishes to anchor this new dimension of the sardine town, illustrated by the Douarnenez Cinema Festival or this nationally recognized audiovisual BTS at the Saint-François-Notre-Dame high school in Lesneven. Other institutions such as TyFilm, in Mellionnec, the Ouest Group, Paris-Brest Productions, Tita Prod, the Cinémathèque de Bretagne, Bretagne Cinéma complete this ecosystem currently being created. And we are announcing, for the start of the 2025 school year, the creation of a new audiovisual BTS at the Jean-Marie Le Bris high school in Douarnenez.