bonapartconsultingparis

Is the Marais losing it's appeal?

The Guardian wrote today about the increasing Mall-isation of the Marais. "Paris's historic Jewish quarter, has fallen victim to the tourist onslaught and rocketing property prices." I was writing about this in September 2006 when the phenomenon was already well underway...........

"Plus the place is turning into a shopping mall. The worst I've seen is the new Lee store which has used the beautiful old facade of the building in a most heart rending manner to flog it's tawdry trousers."

Don't even think of going there on a Sunday for a quiet stroll, you'll be mown off the pavement.

That said, there are of course still charming pockets which you'll have all to yourself and it can't be beaten for being smack bang in the centre of town from where you can walk everywhere. Plus there are the hotel particuliers, the fun bars and Les Bain des Marais Hammam andit's good for spotting sexy young people of either sex. It's not all that bad.

Renovation of the Magasins généraux & La Villette

As you walk along the la Villette canal basin it is difficult to miss the two buildings that define its extremities.
The Magasins géneraux were built between 1845 and 1853 and stored grain and flour until a fire broke out.

In 2001 the Paris City Council set about their reconversion. The project should be finished in early 2008. The building on quai de Loire already houses a student residence with 165 rooms, 37 artists’ workshops, a restaurant and an exhibition space. Opposite, the exterior appearance of the building has been retained so as not to break the symmetry, and the reconstruction project is part of a High Quality Environmental (HQE) plan: use of renewable raw materials, highly-effective thermal insulation and sun protection standards, as well as a system to produce energy that associates solar captors and the recuperation of rainwater. This building will house an Express by Holiday Inn hotel, an accommodation centre for young people Christopher’s Inn, a car park and a restaurant.

The rehabilitation of the buildings is part of a wider project to develop and enhance the la Villette basin, and
includes notably the opening of MK2 cinemas, the restaurant 25°Est, the renovation of place de la Bataille-de-
Stalingrad, the reconversion of the rotonde de Ledoux, and the project for a marina. So, this once prosperous and subsequently run-down area is in the process of becoming an attractive and trendy place, for both residents and visitors.

Les Bobos

With thanks to King Negrito for providing a great translation and helpful imagery to Renaud's song for this article
From I V Y paris: Hot on the heels of ARTE TV's Bobo (Bourgeois Bohemian) programme Dwell magazine has just published an article about Belleville, an area that has been colonised depuis longtemps by the Bobos, mostly those from good families who migrated East in search of space and authenticity (which is rapidly dying away because this had such an effect on property prices).

"Change, too, starts small. Some describe it as gentrification, others as the inevitable rhythm and flow of local economies. Belleville, in Northeast Paris, is fertile ground for these transformations—it has a hefty stock of turn-of-century industrial buildings, as well as gross monstrosities of public housing blocks erected in the 1970s. This neglected outcrop of the capital has long been home to itinerant workers, first from across France in the late 19th century, and now from all over the world—North Africans (both Muslim and Jewish), sub-Saharan Africans, Chinese, and South Asians.

The burgeoning neighborhood’s latest stream of migrants come from the land of bourgeois bohemia. Today Belleville is full of bobo artists, admen aspiring to artiness, young craftsmen inhabiting the former workshops of old craftsmen, and people who simply appreciate the neighborhood’s cultural kaleidoscope.

Read more on I V Y paris

Photo from Fete de Ganesh in the quartier, every September

"Little Jaffna", around metros Gare du Nord, La Chapelle, and Louis Blanc, looks a bit down at heel but you'll find shops selling handmade saris (Saree Palace, 182 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis), cheap and cheerful supermarkets, jewellery shops, Indian music stores, travel agencies (with good deals on flights to India at c 500 euros), and restaurants offering authentic Indian and Sri-Lankan cuisine. France's first Hindu Temple, Sri Manicka Vinayakar, 72 Rue Philippe de Girard, it is open daily to visitors and welcomes all guests. It also organises the magnificent Ganesh Festival in September each year.

Other streets to check out are rue Cail and rue Perdonnet.
Not many of the people I advised to invest in Max Dormy and Chateau Rouge took me up on it. Okay, it's was for the fearless, long-term investor but speculators are supposed to have balls. If you want to be a pioneer you have to be brave. I noticed a while back the Mairie was building lots of artist live/work units on rue Philippe de Girard (following regeneration at rue des Gardes in La Goutte d'Or) then lo and behold, swank hotels follow suit. Maybe now that Kube has opened they'll believe me. The area still looks a bit down at heel but it's a great place to go if you're after vegetarian food. Home to a community of Sri-Lankan Tamils who fled their country in the 1980's, escaping a violent civil conflict with the island's ethnic majority, the Cinghalese. The French Prefecture opened up a period of nearly systematic asylum in the 80's but it decreased later due to European measures designed against an influx in immigration.

Philippe Starck hotel in 20eme

Looks like the 20eme will continue to zoom up in price, look what's coming:

"We have selected a site in the 20th arrondissement of Paris (but where exactly, psst), to become the home of our flagship hotel. The first Mama Shelter in Paris will have 172 rooms and is scheduled to open in 2008.Mama Shelter is the result of the association between Town&Shelter and Urbantech to create the first Philippe Starck hotel in France. Mama Shelter's goal is to offer a modern approach to the hotel industry, by designing affordable and sexy three star city hotels for business and leisure travelers."

Paris stylee walk on the wild side

Just out from the Mairie de Paris is this map of the most deprived areas of Paris, where they are investing in 211 million euros this year alone. We may have high taxes but at least the money is being invested in our city and it's inhabitants, including the most needy 350 000.

Attached to each area, there is a list of the number of inhabitants, the percentage of those under 20 years old and the percent unemployed (Chomage). The 24% foreigners we're not talking about these people, but mostly African and Maghrebin (North African) immigrants.

You could use this as a guide of where to buy that will eventually appreciate rather than hold it's value like the more priveleged parts of Paree. If you are on a limited budget and quite a pioneer. Like other capital cities, at least London (see Brixton) and New York (hipster-ville Williamsburg), Paris is gentrified up now and house prices in even places shown on this indicator like Belleville and Menilmontant have risen sharply over the years.

You could still choose the dodgy parts of town that are left (and cheaper), batten down the hatches, bribe your friends to visit you and then sooner or later you'll see a delicatessan selling over-priced Italian salami spring up on the corner where the drug addicts used to hang out.

In La Chapelle in the 18th, prices have risen by 21% between June 2005 - June 2006. It's here you find the quartier L Goutte d'Or where "Nana" was born - before I moved here I had to visit to see it was still a web of Zola-esqe crime and destitution. The answer is a resounding Yes. Don't ask me then why I decided to live nearby (Chateau Rouge) for the first year I was in Paris. I didn't realise it until I moved to a quartier "moins chaud" but it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I hadn't realised it but I had been internalising a kind of tension through the kind of "looking over my shoulder" behaviour and was getting worn down by the racy remarks from the North African men, young and old.

"Enfin, un quartier ancien au bâti très dégradé était concerné, la Goutte d’or, touchée par de lourds problèmes sociaux, de délinquance et de toxicomanie."

There are some extremely run-down buildings and social problems amongst the most visible, drug addiction.

So before jumping in as a pioneer, make sure you can hack it or will you feel unsafe coming from the Metro to your door late at night. You may not be able to hang out in your local Cafe either in that much comfort (okay sorry, I'm exaggerating but in some areas there are NO women in the cafes at all, except the odd prostitute). If this is a problem for you, stay away from some of these areas - at least until you are more streetwise because of course they are all fabulous in their own way too and I do still love Chateau Rouge and the time I spent there. The local Boulanger still remembers me when I pass by on the days I go to the fantatstic Marché Exotique on the rue Dejean. Very cheap and great for hard to find ingredients.

If you are thinking of renting your property to foreigners, especially short term holiday visitors, stay away from these areas on the map all together, yes, even Montmartre with the Sacre Coeur (oh, all right then, unless you are totaly stuck on the area like the fabulous Lamark Caulincourt) because sometimes people are very wary about going there at all, warned by alarmist guidebooks and Hotel Concierge. If it's too far from the Cafe Flore you'll be looking at an empty bookings calendar unless you've targetted a more Paree-Savvy type of visitor, of course these do exist.

Mais, J'aime ma ville en toute ses formes!

New for autumn:

4* Amiral Hotel at 98 avenue d'Italie 75013.

Italian Vincent Cozzoli is opening his new resto Villa Dell'Arte - in the spot formerly occupied by the Pavilion Puebla next to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont - the restaurant is in a Second-Empire pavilion with views of the park behind. Corner of Ave Simon Bolivar and Rue Botzaris 19e Tel: 01 42 08 92 62

Close by is La Geode, the new hemispheric cinema equipped with the latest digital technology.

La Vie Bohème

This is a great article by Madelyn Byrne about buying a home in Paris - I don't know the writer but it's spot on. I'd be rather less polite than they were about what a great investment the 17th arrond. is as featured in the recent NYTimes article though.
Parts of the 17th that are "sought after", as real estate agents would say, but there are whole swathes of it that are not so cherished, even though they have their own charm. These areas are not for buy-to-let investors because parts of the 17th are out on a limb and a bit rough round the edges if you are hoping to rent the newly purchased apartment to a tourist or business person.

Mainly the article is great because it's so free of the claptrap I read on a regular basis ("The prices are going up by 20% - forever!). The market has cooled since the craziness of Summer 2005 before the Olympics - property is not shifting so fast right now but that's great because it gives more time to weigh up the pros and cons instead of being backed into a corner by owners or agents saying the apartment will be taken tomorrow. Sometimes really nice places do go after only a day or too and plenty change hands privately without ever making it into an real estate agency- these are usually the ones I'm after for my clients.

I especially like their counsel to buy in areas which will hold their value, rather than seeking out the petit peu sketchy neighbourhoods: sticking to the central (ok, expensive) districts can pay off long term. I have to say though that this bit was rather alarmist and did remind me of the Parisians that just never, ever venture to the 18/19/20th arrond's, mainly because they'd be terrified if they saw a black person who wasn't sweeping the street or serving in a shop:

"the neighbourhood was marginal, many tenants refused to pay the rent and could not be evicted due to protective rental laws. Finally, in the 1970’s Philippe’s father, Pierre, made an appointment with the building manager and drove from Normandy to visit the building. Pierre is an extremely old fashioned and conservative person; he still talks about his shock when he met the manager, who wore a floor length fur coat made of wolf and looked like a pimp. The whole situation was fishy with illegal tenants, under-the-table-payments and Pierre realized they were never going to turn it around. They sold the building for a pittance."

What a ghaaaastly experience!

It's true that in the 8th arrond. for example, there may be less room for appreciation and you might not get that extra bedroom but you can rent to a businessman for a whacking great rent. Plus, he or she will barely use the apartment and it'll be returned to you almost pristine because he or she spent most of their time shuttling home to see their family and working or eating in restaurants when they were in Paris.

In "up-coming areas" buildings tend to be less owner-occupied and therefore have had minimal investment over the years in their upkeep, (Parisian Landlords are not known for their generosity to tenants). You might find out you have a "musician" next door (playing the same three chords from when he gets up at 2pm each day until night time when his mates come over) which will annoy tenants if you are renting and drive you nuts when you come to Paris for some R&R. I'm all for La Vie Bohème but not everyone finds the crumbling courtyard and overgrown cobblestones so attractive.

Feckin' Falafel

Sadly the Marais is not what it once was, a beautiful place to stroll and soak up the architecture, sophisticated boutiques and escape from crowded Beaubourg.

I've just about had it with people raving about this foodstuff and I hate fat falafeled pigeons that dive bomb outside the shops.
I couldn't believe it when I was almost mown down by a over hormoned teenager roaring up and down the rue des Rosiers on the type of Quad bike I last saw my Uncle driving back home on the farm.

Plus the place is turning into a shopping mall. The worst I've seen is the new Lee store which has used the beautiful old facade of the building in a most heart rending manner to flog it's tawdry trousers.

rue St Denis is not just for you know what

It's great for shopping too. Covered passages can be found peppered through the 1st, 2nd and 9th districts but if you’re not on the look-out you can easily miss these beautiful shopping walkways. The character of each varies, Passage du Grand-Cerf next to the rather insalubrious (but gentrifying) rue Saint-Denis area, crossing with rue Dussoubs, is definitely worth more than a peek for the young design talent it hosts.

Inside is a mix of mini-boutiques, restaurants, ateliers (workshops) and furniture shops. Brazilian restaurant Ang’s at no. 2 is a great place for a sandwich and at the other end of the passage there is a furniture shop selling cute French door handles for 5 euros a pop.

Others to note are MX , a very hip designer who makes jewellery from pearls and As’Art African art gallery.

In May and October the area hosts les "Puces du Design" dedicated to furniture from the 60’s and 70’s.

But go in the afternoon because the shopkeepers seem to be rather sleepy and only open after lunch.

Seriously, I am watching the prostitution rate very carefully. Now that Montorgueill has up and come, the Sentier and rue St Denis' working girls are getting pushed into a concentrated area and after new laws outlawing street-walking it could be clocking off time for the Ladies of the Night. Actually, it's a law which is putting more women in danger as they turn to the internet to find clients and receive them in their homes or hotels. Without the carmaraderie of the rue if something goes wrong and the punter turns out to be dodgy, it's harder to get help from the others. I saw a great documentary where many prostitutes were interviewed and they were bemoaning the fact that they are being pushed into more clandestine quarters. Still, it won't hurt the property prices.