REPORT. "We'll have to go to the ends of the earth to buy a floor of chips": in Clermont-Ferrand, the closure of Auchan leaves an entire neighborhood and its residents destitute.

A restructuring plan with very concrete consequences. Last November, Auchan announced the elimination of 2,400 jobs in several warehouses, at headquarters, and also in stores. Two hypermarkets in Bar-le-Duc, in the Meuse department, and in Clermont-Ferrand , in the Puy-de-Dôme department, will close their doors for good on Saturday, May 17. A supermarket in Aurillac, in the Cantal department, will also close on May 31. As for the hypermarket in Woippy, in the Moselle department, it is to be taken over by Leclerc.

North of Clermont-Ferrand, the 200 employees of the loss-making Auchan hypermarket are to be laid off. The store opened in 1972 in a working-class neighborhood of the city, and in recent days, everyone has been saying goodbye to their store in their own way.

On the spot, it smells like the end, there are empty shelves as far as the eye can see and a handful of customers have come to take advantage of the clearance offers. "It's like there's been an apocalypse, there's nothing left," Lydia regrets. But she still found some purple orchids, which she will "keep as a souvenir." She greets the cashier, wishes her "good luck because after that I never come back and with sadness, believe me." "It was my favorite store," says Lydia, " because I live next door and, so to speak, it has almost grown old with me. When I come here, I stay at least two hours. Even my husband, sometimes, he asked me the question, if I hadn't left for Paris and come back ! We met the neighbors, we chatted, it was my walk."

"I'm going to miss that, it's a big sadness."

Lydia, a long-time customer of Auchan in Clermont-Ferrand

to franceinfo

Another sign of attachment, a couple asks for a souvenir photo under the red Auchan sign, amidst the empty shelves. "We've lived here for 30 years," he explains. Customers are lingering, they're about to say goodbye to Céline, the receptionist who is one of the 194 laid-off employees. "It's hard, " she admits, "it's leaving a family, I almost want to say, because we spend more time with colleagues, than we spend with our own family sometimes. And what I tell myself at 50 is that it's not always easy to find work afterward. But hey, you have to be active right away afterward."

And the residents all have the same question on their minds: where to go shopping now? There's Lidl and Leclerc, but they're hard to get to. "We'll have to go to the ends of the earth to buy a whole floor of crisps," complains one customer. The closure of Auchan is even a "catastrophe" for Rachel, she used to buy everything there, food and clothes. So she's going to get back behind the wheel, despite her 98 years, "if there's a lot to carry too, you have to have a car," she says.

Unless she has a truck neighbor like Laurent: " In my building, I put up a poster, I make myself available to elderly people to take them shopping once a week. They have nothing left, with their walking frames, where do you want them to go?" One of the customers sums up: Auchan was the lungs of the northern districts of Clermont.

The disappearance of the iconic hypermarket is disrupting an entire neighborhood, starting with the surrounding shopping mall. Auchan's departure is accelerating the closure of stores. Those that remain—opticians, hairdressers, and a kebab shop—will be working in a nearly empty mall. "There are 3,000 to 7,000 people a day who come to Auchan, so it's bound to reduce traffic considerably," explains Alexis, manager of an optician's store. "It will only be with the customers we already have. Plus, there are plenty who think the entire mall will close. We'll have to see, gauge what happens in the coming months."

And beyond that, the entire priority neighborhood of Croix-de-Neyrat, with its 8,000 inhabitants, will be affected. It was built in the 1970s around the Auchan store, which was called Mamouth at the time, and it has grown further with the arrival of the tramway. "The tram is all well and good, but what if it doesn't achieve anything," says Marie-Pierre Fréjaville, president of the neighborhood committee. She fears that real estate prices will plummet: "The apartments are worthless. Without Auchan, they're worthless. Members who sell their apartments—they used to be very expensive, but now they can't sell them."

Another concern is the increase in crime. For some customers, the reason Auchan closed is also the young people hanging around outside. And everyone fears that "it will become a zone," with drug trafficking outlets setting up shop in the empty premises.

Several committees are mobilized, including "Let's not lose the north" which distributes leaflets to customers . "If there are a lot of us coming, it will have more weight, of course," says a resident who manages to convince a customer to demonstrate in front of the shopping center on Saturday. "To keep the pressure on the town hall, so they don't leave us with nothing. We won't have an Auchan anymore, that's for sure, but at least we'll have a local shop."

But the priority for Clermont-Ferrand mayor Olivier Bianchi is first to negotiate with Auchan to compensate, in particular, the mall's merchants. "My challenge today is not to give up too much on 'the city can do everything' or 'the city can take care of itself,'" he explains. "Even if, in fact, there will be a role to play. But for now, it's about trying to push the Auchan group against the wall because I'm not giving financial capitalism any favors." The mayor says he's studying the establishment of a weekly market. He hopes to open a medium-sized food store by 2026.