La Samaritaine's renaissance

Next year, in Paris, an extraordinary new 226,000 sq ft department store should open – part of the remodeled La Samaritaine; a Parisian store institution since its founding in 1870 by Ernest Cognacq. His byword was "sell more to sell cheap and sell cheap to sell more".

The original and magnificent 517,000 sq ft Art Deco / Art Nouveau store, arranged in four listed blocks, was acquired by LVMH in 2001 at a reported Euro 225 million but was closed 14 years ago on fire safety reasons. Redevelopment has been delayed and halted by legal and regulatory challenges but works should now complete by April 2020.

The new-look La Samaritaine will embrace a new DFS store, 226,000 sq ft of offices, a 72 bed 5* Hotel Cheval Blanc and 96 affordable housing units in a location on the mass market Rue de Rivoli shopping street, adjacent to the river and equidistant between the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame; an area described by promoter De Boysson as “very, very nice to wander and to visit”. The eight F&B offers will be independently operated within the context of the DFS/LVMH plan. If the last DFS store at the famed T Fondacio dei Tedeschi in Venice is any guide, this larger event will be remarkable in providing the archetypical destination event for both Parisians and tourists; primarily Asian.

Part of the planning disputed concerned one fa?ade with a proposed ‘ripple glass fa?ade’ by Japanese architects SANNA. They described it as a “set of etched glass waves” but opponents said it will look like a shower curtain. But with its great glazed atrium, monumental staircases, restored frescoes and art nouveau finishes, the interior promises to be a new 'palace of consumption'.