St.-Ouen

Karim Bouamrane in his office in St.-Ouen, France.

Five decades later, that building — in St.-Ouen, a Paris suburb — is a distant memory, and in its place rises France’s Olympic pride: the athletes’ village, with its architectural-showcase buildings that are outfitted with solar panels, deep-sinking pipes for cooling and heating, and graceful balconies from which to look down on the forest planted below.

“All of a sudden, we have the same feeling of pride as people living in the hypercenter,” said the mayor of St.-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, 51, using his personal shorthand for the glamorous downtown playgrounds of the elites.

Even before the Olympic Committee choose to invest in this economically depressed northern suburb, St.-Ouen was changing.

At the center of the activity is Mr. Bouamrane, a member of the Socialist Party, who is in the news a lot these days as St.-Ouen prepares to welcome the Olympic athletes.