In Lyon, UMIH joins Grégory Doucet in his plea to regulate commercial leases

The mayor of Lyon continues to push for authorization to experiment with regulating commercial leases. He and his counterpart Pierre Hurmic will send a letter to Sébastien Lecornu to this effect very soon. " This summer, with the mayor of Bordeaux , we made the same observation that many professionals saw landlords putting them under tremendous pressure and wanting to increase rents ," the mayor of Lyon explained to a few journalists this Tuesday.

The image was far from ordinary, and Grégory Doucet's entourage was well aware of it. The mayor, who has not always been in high esteem among restaurateurs and shopkeepers since the beginning of his term, appeared on Tuesday to be a close friend alongside Thierry Fontaine, president of the Umih (Union for the Protection of Human Rights), and Jean-David Perthuis, owner of numerous establishments in Lyon, including the Saint-Antoine refreshment bar.

Alongside the Green mayor, the former, president of the Union of Hotel Trades and Industries, agrees and welcomes the mayor's plea for a framework for commercial leases. " We are fighting against the property companies that are playing our businesses on Excel spreadsheets ," he confirms, referring to sometimes excessive rent increases. For example, the tripling of the rent decided by its landlord partly led to the closure of Café Pearl. "I 'm afraid that, little by little, good retailers will throw in the towel ," adds the president of Umih.

275 new installations confirmed in Presqu'île by 2025 Grégory Doucet came up with figures this Tuesday, mentioning " already 164 new installations in 2025, and 111 new ones currently under construction on sites ," in Presqu'île alone. These figures should be qualified in light of the number of closures occurring at the same time. Interviewed by Lyon Capitale, Cédric Ducarrouge, regional retail agency director at JLL, indicated that Lyon's city center " is not in a serious crisis " but believes that there are currently " more departures than installations ." A symptom, according to him, of "a struggling business that is transforming ." While Lyon is holding up better than the rest of the major French cities, one unknown still remains: " What will the visitor trends be since the implementation of the Limited Traffic Zone? " And Cédric Ducarrouge concludes: " When you transform a city center into a pedestrian zone, you increase the performance of businesses in the medium term, but only if you haven't blocked the means of access. It's still too late to draw any conclusions. "

While he mentions a gloomy summer, particularly for the restaurant industry with " between -20 and -30% in June, July and August ", Thierry Fontaine immediately points out that " all areas have been affected ". He continues: " I often hear that Grégory Doucet has ruined the city, in which case he is mayor of many cities, because everyone is in the same situation."

A boon for the Green mayor, given that the intense media campaign by the Lyon Defenders collective has given the Presqu'île the image of a city center in decline. Nor have the poor commercial vacancy figures helped, reaching 7.8% in 2024. " Yes, commercial vacancy has increased, but it was starting from a very low base (less than 4% before Covid-19, Editor's note). In the current climate of gloom, Lyon is no exception. However, we are holding up better than other city centers in major cities ," the mayor argues.

An example, according to him, of this resilient dynamism is the opening this month of a new boutique of the historic shoemaker "Adrien", (whose manager is not really a fervent supporter of the mayor) whose closure had moved the people of Lyon and symbolized for the mayor's opponents the damage of his urban planning policy.