Demolition
The cycle track was demolished to make room for a bypass, the Périphérique, to be built around Paris. Keeping the road to a straight line took it under one end of the track. Two of the Parc's four stands were demolished, and the rest stayed up for another two years before neglect meant they too had to come down.
Jacques Goddet, who had taken ownership of the track on the death of Henri Desgrange, fought the demolition order. He said:
| “ | That the administration of the city, with an especially motivated sports advisor, should want to interrupt the activities of the company running the Parc – my company – demands explanations. We had been model partners going right back to the previous century, having the most courteous, the most straightforward dealings with the administration of the city of Paris, which owned our land from its beginnings. We were its tenants and therefore we had a lease. It had all the clauses that any lease would have, right down to rights to raise the rent, terms for extension of the period of lease… As tenants, paying rent, we were therefore entitled to our rights, which were that when the time came to eject us, there was a duty, without discussion, to pay us the costs of the ending of the lease. Those would have been considerable sums, because our little Parc, its buildings and installations, just 32 years old, and its pretty pink track were in excellent state and produced a good income... We found out that what the city of Paris had told us was a lease – something that nobody denied – wasn't one! What had been called a lease, treated as a lease, was just an error of description on the part of the city of Paris. Since 1898! And we who thought we were tenants, with all the rights of tenants, rights that until then had always been respected, suddenly found that under the law we were common concessionaires, people who could be shown the door without any legal discussion and without any damages. | ” |
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—Jacques Goddet |
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A lawyer had found that the hiring agreement in the 19th century included a clause that children of a local school were allowed free use of the stadium on Thursday afternoons. The city of Paris claimed no tenancy agreement would include such a condition. A tenant had exclusive use of what he rented. Therefore Goddet had just a concession to use the land and could be evicted without compensation.
Goddet took the argument to appeal but failed. The velodrome became rubble to form the foundations of a football stadium. The track's shareholders received nothing in damages.
Read more about this topic: Parc Des Princes