PARIS — The sidewalks are cracked along “la plus belle avenue du monde” — the most beautiful street in the world. Each day, 60,000 cars clog the lanes. Walkways are cluttered with abandoned scooters. The Avenue des Champs-Élysées was built for royalty and named after paradise. But its last major renovation was more than 20 years ago. New retail tenants have been intermittent. Parisians avoid the area with the resolution of New Yorkers steering clear of Times Square. As Paris prepares to host the 2024 Olympics, hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into construction projects on the avenue, one of the most visited areas of the city, as it tries to re-establish and redefine its place. Apple and WeWork moved in recently, and will be followed by the Galeries Lafayette department store. Planned improvements will beautify and expand space for cyclists. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent refurbishing historic monuments, including the 119-year-old Grand Palais exhibition center. The Danish architect Bjarke Ingels crafted a vortex-like entrance into the four-story Galeries Lafayette department store.CreditElliott Verdier for The New York Times “We want to prevent the image of the Champs-Élysées from falling,” said Jean-Noël Reinhardt, the president of the Comité Champs-Élysées, a community group. The project is a complicated undertaking. Commercial rents along the promenade are among the highest in the world, at $1,519 per square foot per year, compared with $2,250 on Fifth Avenue, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Construction in the Beaux-Arts buildings that line the street is heavily regulated, and any changes made to accommodate tourists and global chains risk further alienating locals.
Without the renovation, Champs-Élysées’ risks losing its prestige as a world-class destination, said Jean-Louis Missika, the deputy mayor of Paris for urban planning and economic development. The Champs-Élysées ranks among grand boulevards such as Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and Oxford Street in London. Other streets, such as Des Voeux Road in Hong Kong and Khao San Road in Bangkok, are trying to position themselves as major attractions. The avenue, stretching nearly 1.2 miles from Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, has inspired streets in the Bronx, New Orleans, Prague and, recently, Tokyo. Joe Dassin sang in 1969, over perky piano chords, that the Champs-Élysées had “everything you want.”
Named after the Elysian fields of Greek mythology, the street was commissioned in the 1600s for the French royal family. Napoleon III added fountains and pathways in the 1800s. Later in the 19th century, a regionwide urban design overhaul led by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann erected the uniform stone buildings that still populate many Parisian streets. Parisians celebrated their city’s liberation from the Nazis in 1944 and their nation’s World Cup victories there. A restoration in the 1990swidened sidewalks, added trees and moved parking underground. But the glamorous charm that made the Champs-Élysées a quintessentially Parisian street has waned. The theaters that dot the avenue have shed millions of moviegoers. Shopping arcades set farther back from the street are often deserted. The Arc de Triomphe, a testament to military might that has become a monumental symbol of the extreme affluence and global consumerism in its shadow, was recently vandalized by so-called yellow vest protesters objecting to high taxes and income disparity. In 2007, the city government, wanting to resist the “banalization” of the strip, tried to block H & M from opening an outlet on the avenue. The fast-fashion chain arrived anyway, along with two Zara stores and an Abercrombie & Fitch housed in a sumptuous mansion behind a gilded gate. “Having always the same brands, it’s not good for the place, because people don’t know where they are,” Mr. Missika said. “They could be in London or Tokyo.” Ideally, he said, the Champs-Élysées would host a balanced mix of fast-food outlets, sit-down restaurants, global retailers and local designers. But the city has few legal tools to shape the commercial composition of the street. “There must be a good equilibrium of commercial activity,” Mr. Missika said. “When a place is totally deserted by local people, it’s a big problem; the soul of the city disappears.” The Champs-Élysées is being repopulated by tenants that hope to draw both Parisians and tourists.
A 70,000-square-foot extension of the Galeries Lafayette chain will open between Rue La Boétie and Rue du Colisée at the end of March, becoming the largest retail site on the street. The nearly 90-year-old property, a former bank, is owned by the Qatar Investment Authority. The Danish architect Bjarke Ingels uncovered a hidden cupola and crafted a vortex-like entrance into the four-story store. A food court with communal tables will welcome shoppers and the 180,000 people who work around the Champs-Élysées. Galeries Lafayette follows Apple, which opened a store in November at the corner of Rue Washington in a 19th-century apartment building that was once home to the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. Architects from Foster & Partners restored the original wood and marble staircase and added a glinting, kaleidoscopic roof over an interior courtyard. Negotiations over construction permits took months, in part because of the building’s history. The 59,000-square-foot property was purchased in April for more than $650 million for Bayerische Versorgungskammer a German pension fund. Other companies are finding their way onto the street. In December, Norges Bank Real Estate Management of Norway bought nearly 110,900 square feet of retail and office space at 79 Champs-Élysées. Thomas Jefferson once lived at 92 Champs-Élysées, where WeWork opened its 48,000-square-foot outpost in June. Hermé, known as the “Picasso of pastries,” teamed up with the beauty brand L’Occitane en Provence to open a 10,000-square-foot lifestyle store at 86 Champs-Élysées in early 2018. New boutiques from Dior and Nike are in the works. Conventional retail, with its large signs and rushed customers, “will eventually just disappear” from the Champs-Élysées, said Stefan Behling, the lead architect on the Apple project. Instead, concept stores and experiential spaces will take over. “The subtlety is the right thing,” he said. But although stores take up most of the Champs-Élysées, only 23 percent of visitors come to shop, according to data from the neighborhood committee. Many are looking for culture and leisure, for reasons to interrupt their sidewalk strolls with a stop in a gallery or an elevator ride up to an expansive view. City rules that were relaxed in recent years will allow more development of the Champs-Élysées’ rooftops, with bars, restaurants and up to a dozen pools, including one planned for a SO Sofitel hotel. Initiatives to expand green space have already taken root. The Champs-Élysées has been closed to cars one Sunday per month since 2016. One night in July, it became an open-air cinema where the fantasy film “Les Visiteurs” played on a towering screen near the Arc de Triomphe. Helen Mirren and Jane Fonda strutted down the middle of the street for a 2017 fashion show. Last year, the city began constructing a dedicated bike lane on the Champs-Élysées, which it expects to complete by early 2020. A government effort — with an assist by Chanel — to upgrade and expand the exhibition and event spaces at the Grand Palais will start next year. There is also talk of sprucing up the gardens along the eastern part of the Champs-Élysées, where Jeff Koons’s towering 35-foot-tall sculpture “Bouquet of Tulips” will be permanently placed this year. The French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, supported by private funding, are redesigning several fountains along the street. “This is part of a global transformation of the city,” Mr. Missika said
