With the decline in mail volumes, La Poste must transform its large postal sorting centers, an entire historical heritage that it strives to keep alive like a majestic building located north of Paris that it just needs to rehabilitate.
The autumn sun hits the red brick facade of the building at 107 ter rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in the 10th arrondissement, a stone’s throw from Paris’ Gare de l’Est. The 7,600 m2 industrial-style building is next to the Françoise Sagan media library, also in red brick, and a small, well-kept fenced square.
The 1965 building, created by Jean-Baptiste Mathon, Grand Prix de Rome in 1923, housed postal workers’ accommodation and a La Poste sorting center a few years ago, but has lost its usefulness as the number of letters has decreased drastically.
In 2023, La Poste’s postal business will account for just 16% of its revenue.
“We asked ourselves: +What will we do with this building, in this neighborhood that is moving?”, says the deputy general director of the Real Estate Post, Camille Gehin, on Friday during the presentation of the rehabilitated building to the press.
Answer: around 80 apartments for rent, including social housing, a post office and a coworking space MitWit, a subsidiary of La Poste Immobilier.
The icing on the cake: a 650 m² green terrace on the tenth floor, which offers a 360° view of Paris, its most emblematic monuments (the Sacred Heart, the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame) and its slate roofs.
– Historic buildings –
“We have recovered a very beautiful original architecture”, rejoices Luc Poux, of the architecture firm Naud & Poux.
The works, which began “two and a half years” ago for a sum of around €22 million, will soon be completed to allow the opening of the post office in December and the delivery of the accommodation “at the beginning of next year”, he reveals the Gehin.
A real estate company of the La Poste group, La Poste Immobilier was created in 2005 and since then has managed almost 10,000 properties, covering a surface area of over 6 million square metres, i.e. “one of the largest real estate portfolios in France”.
It is responsible for the development, maintenance and enhancement of this park “which ranges from vast industrial platforms to small commercial spaces, from tertiary premises to historic buildings built in the 19th century”, we read in a presentation sheet.
His most beautiful operations: The Poste du Louvre in Paris, the Marseille Colbert Post Office and the Lyon Bellecour Post Office.
These must be profitable because “we cannot represent a cost for La Poste”, says Gehin. Which is easy in Paris, but “more complicated” in the “less dynamic” areas of France.
But La Poste does not contravene its general interest objectives as it strives to plan 30 to 50% social housing per program.
Furthermore, while waiting for the recovery projects to be completed, it makes its walls available free of charge for exhibitions intended for the local public or associations.
Thus, the building in the 10th arrondissement of Paris hosted an emergency reception center for women and children of the Aurore association for 4 years.