The facts are simple: first, the Lenval Foundation sold the building known as the Costanzo Center to Bouygues Immobilier and transferred the activity elsewhere. Naturally, the sale was subject to suspension (pro bono fine), so the Lenval Foundation cannot use the sale proceeds for other initiatives. Then, a local group (the neighborhood committee) opposed this action, but their legal appeals were rejected twice, initially and on appeal (hence the appeal to the Council of State). Lastly, the City Hall, which did not exercise its right of preemption at the time of the sale, granted Bouygues Immobilier the requested building permits.
The case was thought to be closed beyond its merits. But… the recent (and cryptic) statements from Christian Estrosi reopen the matter. The opposition seizes the issue and asserts its truths.
Everyone is wondering what is happening, why… and “cui prodest?”
We await what comes next…
COSTANZO CENTER: PATRICK ALLEMAND CHALLENGES THE MAYOR
I have just written to the Mayor of Nice, who now wants to save the Costanzo Center.
I am pleased, but at the same time, I cannot help but ask several questions. It is indeed curious that the mayor is only now discovering the architectural interest of this building, about which I alerted him by letter on May 12, 2010 (attached copy + response from Alain PHILIP, Deputy Mayor, delegated to urban planning).
- Why did you not preempt when the Lenval Foundation sold to Bouygues?
- Why did you issue the building permit?
- Why was the motion presented by the “Changing Era” group rejected at the municipal council session on June 25, 2010?
- Why such silence from the mayor for 18 months, while numerous elected officials, neighborhood committees, and ordinary citizens have mobilized against this demolition?
- What discussions are underway with the Bouygues group to get them to renounce their building rights?
I demand full transparency in this matter.
Statements from Jacques Victor (General Councilor PC, elected representative of the canton):
“After 18 months of silence, Christian ESTROSI discovers the Costanzo Center and wants to act as a mediator with his concrete-loving friends at Bouygues Immobilier.
It took all this time for the City’s Mayor to engage in this mediation (as Nice-Matin informs us on September 23), to recognize that “the Costanzo Center is an interesting heritage of this neighborhood, for me, it is in line with the Gare du Sud or the Palais de l’Agriculture.”
But why did he not listen at the time to the Riquier-Risso-Barla-Republic Neighborhood Committee, the residents, or my various interventions?
Why did he force all these people to resort to justice, when he had full latitude to buy back this building and refuse the building permit obtained by Bouygues in record time?
For this historic building, there is no shortage of ideas for a new purpose to meet the many needs of the neighborhood.
It is indeed regrettable that the General Council rushed to relocate the “Carrefour Santé Jeunes,” which provided numerous services to the youth in this part of the city. Spaces for associations and civic life, daycare, cultural venue, intergenerational space… are all proposals we have made over the past 18 months to preserve this beautiful building useful to the neighborhood and avoid further concreting.
Since the beginning, we have only kept the “general interest” in mind.
Wouldn’t it be “political games” on the eve of important electoral deadlines that have brought the City’s Mayor out of his silence and inaction on this issue, when he is usually so verbose on many other topics?
We are not at the end of all the resistance actions that have finally forced Christian ESTROSI to speak out. A result credited to the residents of the Costanzo Center, the population of Riquier, and their Neighborhood Committee, to whom I have always affirmed my active solidarity in the name of the “general interest” and the public good.
Whatever the sudden agitation of Christian ESTROSI on the subject may be.
We remain vigilant. The case must still go before the Council of State and can only be closed when the Costanzo Center returns to the population.
The only battles that are lost in advance are those that are not fought. An opening appears after 18 months of action. We acknowledge it as progress, but we remain lucidly and determinedly mobilized as on day one.”
