Originally published April 2021.
This year, a Paris property pioneer celebrates 50 years living and working in France. In half a century of developing office properties, the resilient Paul Raingold has navigated many cycles of boom, bust and recovery. In late 2020 he recovered from coronavirus. Happily, the rejuvenated Paul is now back in the workplace and developing offices in 2021. His golden anniversary is a good time to reflect on the beginning of Paul’s 50-year journey here.
Just like today’s Grand Paris, the early 1970s were a period of radical change in the built environment of Paris, rivalling even the Haussmann era. When Paul first arrived in 1971, Paris still had a 1946 look. Les grands travaux were well under way, but La Défense was just a handful of scattered towers, neither the boulevard périphérique nor the first RER A line were joined up, and there was no mega-airport on the green fields of Roissy.
The year 1971 saw political as well as physical change. De Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou, was an ultra-modernist, loving the automobile – “it is up to the city to adapt itself to the car, not the reverse” – and renouncing “all these building regulations which make architecture so hard”. Under Pompidou, glass and steel towers appeared above Haussmann’s low-rise sandstone buildings. Les stations cathédrales at La Défense, Etoile, Auber and Les Halles were opened, gigantic underground hubs for the new RER express train, a forerunner of London’s future Crossrail.
Four big black scrapbooks in Paul’s Champs-Elysées office trace his colourful story. Inside this property treasure, the yellowing news cuttings of the early 1970s paint a portrait of army-trained Paul’s allure sportive and remark on a certain élégance décontractée. Originally from London, Paul was first brought to Paris to import shopping centre expertise learned in mid-1960s Chicago. Developing office buildings has, however, proved his core skill. The English and Continental company he joined in 1972 became GCI (Générale Continentale Investissements), which Paul founded in 1975. He is still GCI chairman 46 years later.
In Paul’s first three years in Paris, the commercial property market went from boom to bust. Very quickly. Buying was intense in 1971-72, but by late 1973 the Middle East oil crisis had triggered stagflation, unemployment and a spike of interest rates, wiping out many property developers. Since office occupiers tended to buy their floors rather than lease them, the damage of 16% interest rates became widespread. The trente glorieuses, the 30-year period of unbroken post war prosperity, was over.
When de Gaulle’s veto on the UK’s EEC membership was lifted by the more pragmatic Pompidou, a handful of British pioneers entered the Paris property market. The French press even described this phenomenon as le débarquement, echoing the still-recent Normandy landings. The UK newcomers helped professionalise a French property industry that had never attracted top financial talent, adding RICS savoir faire to existing French property skills of conception and realisation. The exclusive 1969 Club, a band of British property brothers in Paris, was created by Weatheralls’ Noel Simpson, a leader known by these first pioneers as ‘St Christopher’ – the patron saint of travellers!
The UK newcomers helped professionalise a French property industry that had never attracted top financial talent, adding RICS savoir faire
The Paris of the 1970s was a colourful and relatively unregulated place, where cash payments were nothing untoward. Veterans recall UK buyers taking a Caravelle jet to Orly in the early morning and returning the same evening having acquired a Paris building and still finding time for a Michelin-starred lunch. Larger-than-life developers took on serious personal risk (and reward), and the young Raingold learned lessons watching Jean-Claude Aaron, creator of the landmark Tour Montparnasse. He recalls meeting the charismatic Monsieur Aaron on the roof of the huge construction site and walking down to the ground floor through each of the 56 levels. What sticks in Paul’s memory is the way Aaron just seemed to know everyone working on his building.
In his 50th Paris anniversary year, Paul’s children Sharon, Alexander and Raphael are increasingly steering the good family ship. With office demand subdued by lockdown and curfew, GCI went into overdrive in 2020. Eye-catching success stories include letting the Curve development in St Denis (with innovative wooden construction) and pre-leasing the whole of Latitude in La Défense, nine months before delivery. Just like Paul himself, the resilient Team Raingold is ready to navigate whatever comes next in 2021.
