PARIS — It’s likely the roughly 16 million tourists who visit the City of Light each year have never heard of the Batignolles, a sleepy area in the west of Paris, best known to native Parisians for its intimate village ambience.
But chances are, the neighborhood won’t stay an insider tip for much longer.
Batignolles, which stretches between the Avenue de Clichy on one side and the Rue de Rome on the other, is turning into one of the city’s most coveted real estate strips, buoyed by new construction and the recent influx of fashion brands.
“We started noticing the changes about four years ago. And ever since [French fashion brand] A.P.C. set up shop here [in 2014], we have seen demand for commercial real estate go up significantly,” said Eugénie Crespin, whose family has been running a real estate agency in the neighborhood for the past 25 years.
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“Retailers understand that there is a lot of purchasing power in the area — it’s very bobo,” she said, referring to the term for “bourgeois-bohème,” “but it’s not bling-bling. Think a good wine bar on the corner, where people go by first names and still smile at each other. The atmosphere is intimate. Little eateries are sprouting, and the brands that have settled here reflect all that. They are fashionable, but remain low-key.”
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Among the most recent arrivals is Balibaris, a French men’s wear label, which offers straightforward fashion at a favorable price-quality ratio. “It’s still very underground here, which is what we love about it — like Canal Saint-Martin (where we also have a store) was eight years ago,” said the brand’s founder, Paul Szczerba. “Or Rue de Charonne, where Isabel Marant set up her first shop [17 years ago], before people discovered it.”
What lured Szczerba into this remote Paris corner was his e-shop, he said. “We looked at the traffic on our Web site, which represents 15 percent of our turnover [of 3.5 million euros, or $3.9 million], and realized that a big part of our deliveries were going to the Batignolles, so we knew what we had to do. I think the reason we are successful here is because our clothes are in tune with the locals’ mood — the Batignolles are young, in their 30s, with two to three kids, very Parisian, elegant, but not pretentious. This creates a real feel-good-environment, which [jibes well] with our clothes. The area is absolutely happening right now.”
“Three, four years ago, no fashion brand would have even thought about settling here. It was considered an old residential area. But recent changes have attracted a lot of investors, interested in purchasing buildings in key locations,” explained Hugo Crespin (Eugenie’s brother), who brokered the Balibaris deal on Place du Docteur Félix Lobligeois, a charming little square surrounding a church and bordering on a park that fills on the weekends with local hipsters.
According to the Crespin agency, rents have gone up slightly, but still remain reasonable. What has changed as a direct consequence of the recent developments, however, is the amount of the so-called “pas de porte,” or key money, to be paid by a tenant to his landlord upon signing a lease, which shot up from nearly zero to a minimum of 20,000 euros, or $22,056 at current exchange, per deal, and in one instance attained 400,000 euros, or $441,136, in a prime location.
Drenched in cultural history as the former home to French music legend Jacques Brel, poet Paul Verlaine, painter Édouard Manet and writer Émile Zola, the neighborhood is chockablock with old ateliers and secret green squares, and Crespin said “little gems” are still plenty, though perhaps not on the most frequented streets. “But we also see a lot of movement in the Rue Biot and Rue des Dames leading to the Place de Clichy.”
Meanwhile, the thriving young labels can count on affluent new customers flocking to the area from the west. Paris’ new courthouse complex, conceived by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, is slated to start operations in the Batignolles in 2016. DDB Worldwide has set up its new offices a few blocks from the main square, while a budding high-end residential district on the other side of the park is expected to make local real estate prices climb quickly.
“In total, 20,000 new residents are due to settle here,” observed Eric Foussat, owner of Atao, one of the most popular oyster and seafood eateries in town. Foussat, who pays 1,000 euros, or $1,102, rent for his 540-square-foot unit, said geographically the area has been quite protected due to the lack of a good public transportation network, but that it would open up with the extension of metro line 14, providing an additional metro stop to the neighborhood by 2018.
The exchange is likely to flow both ways.
La Prestic Ouiston, a fashion label founded by Foussat’s wife Laurence Mahéo, has had a studio and a showroom spread across 2,150 square feet on Rue Lemercier for years, but is now ready to take its arty vibe beyond the sleepy village into the more tourist-driven Saint-Germain-des-Prés. “No one knows we are here,” said Raphael Anfre, studio manager and codesigner of the brand, lauded for its bespoke prints and vintage flair. “Batignolles is changing in a very discreet way and we love this place, but we need more traffic. We want to be seen.”
The district’s artisanal history and homey clientele has also attracted many furniture design shops — vintage as well as well contemporary — but it appears fashion remains key.
Hugo Crespin said he’s currently scouting locations for two French, midmarket women’s wear brands that are eager to get a share of the pie.
French surfer-turned-modern gentlemen’s brand Cuisse de Grenouille, which moved next to A.P.C. on Place du Docteur Félix Lobligeois last winter, said its shop has seen a stellar performance. “We actually wanted a location in Saint-Germain, but realized very quickly that the prices were beyond affordable. Retail space there costs three times as much as here,” explained Lucas Bonnichon, who founded the brand with his brother Séverin in 2010.
Their 380-square-foot unit, which is built like a mini-concept store offering the label’s urban range of men’s wear, but also carrying jewelry, eyewear, books and candles from other brands, has quickly turned profitable. It costs 1,300 euros, or $1,433, in rent each month. “That’s 30 percent less than our store in the Marais, where prices have started to climb,” Bonnichon said.
“The thing about our clientele here is, they are all locals, they tend to stay in their district on the weekends rather than move elsewhere,” Bonnichon said. “Our concept of a lifestyle brand goes well with the their state of mind.”