Charleroi transforms its real estate assets to give them a second life

The Walloon theme of MIPIM 2025 is circularity in real estate. A concept that the city of Charleroi and its intermunicipal company IGRETEC have mastered. Discover 5 projects where real estate assets are transformed into the urban spaces of the future.

The concept of circular urban planning is being used by the City of Charleroi and its intermunicipal company IGRETEC to give a second function to existing buildings.

At the MIPIM conferences, Charleroi's mayor, Thomas Dermine, and IGRETEC's energy transition project manager, Alice Brogniaux, presented five large-scale projects that are shaping Charleroi's urban spaces of tomorrow.

“We have to design a city like a product. We have to design it for our target audiences. For a city, our target audience is both businesses and residents. I want Charleroi to strengthen its residential appeal, which is measured in terms of the number of inhabitants. Residents want to be well connected. They want to be safe. They want a quality urban environment and quality housing. We really need to work on the levers that will make us attractive. We have the same ambitions in terms of economic attractiveness. We have created over 8,000 jobs in Charleroi over the last 5 years. This is one of the highest job creation rates per capita in Belgium. Our challenge is to continue this growth in employment, while at the same time working to make Charleroi a more attractive place to live, so that people who work in Charleroi come to live here,” Thomas Dermine said in his opening remarks at the joint conference with the city of Nantes. The Charleroi mayor also invited real estate developers to invest in Charleroi.

A6K-E6K

The A6K-E6K project is located in the center of Charleroi, next to the train station, in a building dating from the 1980s. “The building was used for postal sorting. About ten years ago, the building was vacated by the post office. We received a request from a number of major industrial groups looking for shared spaces in which to conduct joint innovation projects. We worked with them to design modular spaces to test the concept. This worked very well, with start-ups in particular developing. So we introduced a project to make version 2 of this model. It's no longer a project where you camp in the building, but a complete renovation of the building,” explains Thomas Dermine.

“It's a colossal project involving the renovation of the existing building and the construction of a new one,” says Alice Brogniaux. She goes on to detail the five key sustainability elements in the project. “Firstly, there's the use of aquathermy to harness calories from surface water. Then there's the maximum reuse of materials. In addition, the aim is to bring nature back into the city with a 300-metre green façade.  The project also includes the use of bio-sourced materials, with a facade made of wooden caissons. Finally, the aim is to reopen this building to the city, with visual, functional and urban breakthroughs.”

Left side business park

“This project aims to correct the urban planning mistakes of the 1970s,” says Thomas Dermine.  “We had a phenomenon of urban fragmentation with the car-only approach, where offices and administrations were built in outlying areas. We aimed to correct this by trying to relocate as many administrative and office functions as possible to the city center. Five years ago, we launched the crazy gamble of densifying the downtown area. Five years later, it's becoming a reality, with almost half of the towers already completed.

Business Center Trésignies

This project involves the reconfiguration of an entire district, including the conversion of the Trésignies barracks site. “The plan is to transform the site into a business center for SMEs and entrepreneurs,” explains Thomas Dermine. The space was renovated in two stages. The first wing has been renovated for two years and has a 100% occupancy rate. Work on the second wing has just begun.

“For this project, we received help from Rotor, who carried out a re-use inventory to define the potential for re-use materials, quantify it and then find a re-use channel”, explains Alice Brogniaux.

GHDC - Les Viviers

Five hospital sites have migrated to Belgium's second-largest hospital center, which has sprung up in Charleroi, employing 4,500 people and providing 1,000 beds. Today, the challenge for Charleroi is to reconvert the former hospital sites.

“For the former Notre-Dame hospital, we took the gamble of recentralizing the campus activities of UCLouvain and HELHa in the city center. Charleroi has no university of its own. We have therefore taken initiatives to relocate entire courses to Charleroi,” explains Thomas Dermine. On the other hospital sites, the City of Charleroi has entered into a partnership with Thomas&Piron to transform the sites into housing.

Porte Ouest

This is a 100-hectare zone on a former steelworks complex close to the city center. “It's an area that's about to be freed up and which offers immense scope for creativity. It's flat land close to all modes of transport. We've been working on a master plan for the site's conversion. We have a park project. We have a project with La Défense to create a district of the future and a barracks. We have projects to recreate economic functions. We're going to make land available to private operators to develop activities,” Thomas Dermine explained at MIPIM.