Gare du Nord developers throw in the trowel after public outcry

FRANCE has scrapped a plan for a vast renovation of Gare du Nord that socialists warned would have turned the Eurostar terminus into a tacky shopping mall.

National rail operator SNCF said it was abandoning the scheme after projected costs spiralled to €1 billion (£860 million) over the original budget, and delays meant the new station would not be ready in time for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

The main French contractor, Ceetrus, was due to triple the size of Europe’s busiest train station, which sees 700,000 people pass through it every day. But on Tuesday night, the SNCF subsidiary in charge of stations accused Ceetrus of “serious failure” and terminated its contract.

Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s socialist mayor, initially supported the plan to overhaul the station but turned against it after locals protested against the idea of including a major shopping hub, complete with a vast concert hall, saying it would be out of character with Gare du Nord’s multicultural neighbourhood. Last September, about 20 heavyweight architects including Jean Nouvel, denounced what they called a “pharaonic” project to create a glass structure, with tens of thousands of square feet of shops, walkways, splitlevels and 105 escalators.

They called it a “serious urban error” that would deform the historic building, and urged planners to “go back to the drawing board”.

The project has proved a political hot potato for Ms Hidalgo, who recently launched her bid for the French presidency and is at loggerheads with the administration of Emmanuel Macron.

Jean-baptiste Djebbari, the transport minister, said: “This is a project that was backed by the Paris mayor, voted for by the Paris mayor, who then fought an electoral campaign against the Gare du Nord project. There was no political consistency on this issue.”

He called for a far smaller revamp costing just €50 million – a fraction of the original €500 million budget.

SNCF promised to launch a “quick adaptation” of the station to welcome visitors both for the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympics a year later.

‘This project was backed by the Paris mayor, voted for by the Paris mayor, who then fought against it’