The High Court of Paris today ordered the work undertaken by the French Tennis Federation (FFT) to expand the Roland Garros site to be halted for a maximum period of three months.
The Federation’s project plans to cover the main tracks, but also to expand the space that some 460,000 fans visit each year and which has become the smallest of the four Grand Slam tournaments.
It also plans to expand the exclusive area reserved for sponsors, the “Village”, and build a new field in the greenhouses of Auteuil, the target of criticism from environmentalists.
This new semi-buried court, which will have a capacity for 5,000 spectators, has been one of the FFT’s biggest headaches, since its detractors consider that the works should not affect the adjoining Greenhouse Garden, a space created in 1897 by Jean Camille Formigé and registered as a natural monument.
The order to suspend the work, according to the FFT in a statement, has been taken until a judge decides on the “alleged attack” on the right of Formigé’s successors.
“That decision was an eventuality for which the FFT had prepared,” he indicated this is his note, where he said that he is going to appeal it and trusted in the “legal soundness” of the stadium modernization plan.
The Federation deplored being forced again to stop this project and called it “vital for the future of Roland Garros, the whole of French tennis and more broadly the world image of Paris and France at a sporting and economic level”
French justice orders stop of Roland Garros expansion works
