What was once a 13-hectare hydrocarbon storage site is now one of the freshest green spaces in Seine-Saint-Denis — a literal Olympic legacy project that extended the massive Parc Georges-Valbon. You'll find a brand-new skatepark, a playground for kids, renatured landscapes with walking and cycling paths, and a genuine biodiversity focus. It's the kind of urban transformation that gives you hope for the future of the Greater Paris metropolis.
A 13-hectare former oil depot reborn as a renatured park with a skatepark and playground — the living Olympic legacy of Paris 2024.
Come on weekend mornings to enjoy the skatepark and playground before the afternoon crowds — the site is still freshly landscaped so young plantings offer little shade.
From oil depot to Olympic park: Seine-Saint-Denis's greenest comeback
The Terrain des Essences is one of the most exciting things to happen to Seine-Saint-Denis green spaces in years. This 13-hectare extension of the already-massive Parc Georges-Valbon opened as a direct legacy of the Paris 2024 Olympics, funded entirely by SOLIDEO at a cost of 15.2 million euros. What makes it remarkable is the transformation: until 2021, this was a Ministry of Defense hydrocarbon storage facility — a fenced-off industrial zone. Now it's a renatured landscape with meadows, walking and cycling paths, and a serious biodiversity focus that earned the wider park its Natura 2000 classification.
The facilities are what draw the crowds. There's a brand-new skatepark that's already buzzing with local skaters, a large playground that families from Dugny and La Courneuve have adopted, and plenty of open space for picnics and wandering. The city of La Courneuve describes it as "like an island in the middle of greenery," and that's exactly the feeling — you step off the surrounding streets and into a surprisingly vast, quiet, planted landscape.
It's not perfect: the area is still settling in, some paths feel a bit bare while the plantings mature, and you're in the far northeast of Paris so it's a trek if you're coming from the center. But for locals, this is a game-changer. The fact that an industrial wasteland became a public park in under three years is something worth experiencing firsthand. Come on a weekend morning with kids or a board, and you'll see why the community has embraced it so quickly.