Once frequented by families and fashion fans, this Parisian shopping center is about to see a large part of its stores disappear and its buildings demolished to make way for a major project.
There was a time when people came to spend the entire afternoon there. We did weekend shopping there, strolled through the shopping mall, met neighbors, school friends, entire families. “When I was little, we went there every Saturday with my parents to fill the shopping cart in the huge Carrefour hypermarket. I remember the heads of the gondola, the shelves as far as the eye could see and the sales areas which seemed gigantic to me.“, says Mathieu, 34 years old. As with Bercy 2 in Charenton or Boissy 2 in Val-de-Marne, these supermarkets and temples of mass consumption of the 80s and 90s have long punctuated local life. Today, the aisles ring hollow and the lowered metal curtains of the shops tell another story.
Inaugurated at the beginning of the 1990s, this Parisian shopping center experienced its golden age with its commercial locomotives and its ready-to-wear brands which attracted a clientele well beyond Ivry-sur-Seine. There you could find mass market ready-to-wear, bazaar items, brands where people came to buy their first jeans, their party dress or their trendy sneakers. Around food and large specialized stores, the beating heart of the site, the gallery offered a complete assortment, from opticians to jewelry stores including retail chains like Promod, Cache Cache or Célio which were then all the rage. The parking lot was overflowing on Saturdays and sales periods transformed the corridors into an anthill.
But for several years, attendance has eroded. Empty commercial cells have multiplied, the flagship brands have folded up and the atmosphere has darkened. The Quais d’Ivry shopping center, in Ivry-sur-Seine, is now in its final months. According to a vast urban transformation project, the site must be largely demolished to make way for around 1,000 housing units, as well as new living spaces according to Les Echos. As elsewhere in the Paris region, increased competition from other more modern commercial centers and especially the explosion of Internet orders have disrupted purchasing habits and the retail sector. Fewer traffic, rents that are difficult to sustain, surfaces that have become oversized: the model of these mass distribution complexes is no longer suitable.
Instead of windows lit late at night and squeaking shopping carts, apartment buildings will soon rise from the ground. A new urban page will be written, more residential. There remains a pang in the heart for many residents. “It’s weird to imagine that it will disappear“, confides Mathieu.
As with Bercy 2, it is a part of collective memories which is slowly fading. Shopping centers are no longer the cathedrals they once were, but for an entire generation, they will remain the setting of childhood and a time when shopping still rhymed with family outings.
