At an elevation of 1,500 meters in Isère, empty apartment blocks still overlook the peaks they were meant to guide skiers to. Saint-Honoré 1500 will never quite rise from the ground. Conceived to rescue a waning mining basin, the resort halted in the middle of construction, leaving behind a landscape frozen for more than thirty years.
- Launched in 1977 to redeploy the mining basin, the Saint-Honoré 1500 project saw only two chairlifts open in 1989 before the construction was definitively halted in 1993.
- Despite a financial guarantee from the Isère departmental council, the operation turned into a financial disaster, and the sports facilities were permanently closed in 2003 without a buyer.
- Left abandoned, the site now attracts urban explorers and photographers, and even served as a backdrop in 2019 for the show La Chaud Vive.
- When a ski resort was supposed to save an entire mining basin
- 1989, the half-hearted opening: two chairlifts for a XXL ambition
- The ghost apartment blocks: the brutal heritage of a missed bet
When a Ski Resort Was Supposed to Save an Entire Mining Basin
To understand Saint-Honoré 1500, you have to go back to the 1960s, on the Matheysin plateau. In this part of Isère, mining activity sustained generations. When the mines closed, the region found itself without any economic horizon.
At Saint-Honoré, a village of barely 800 inhabitants, local officials began seeking a way out. The idea quickly formed: if the mountains no longer yielded ore, why not yield tourists? Alpine skiing, booming in the French Alps, appeared as a nearly logical path to reindustrialize the area.
The project was named Saint-Honoré 1500, in reference to its altitude. It fit into a broader movement of reconversion connected to the La Mure Mines, with the aim of turning a mining territory into a winter destination. On paper, everything seemed coherent: exploitable slopes, growing tourist demand, and strong political will.
1989, a Half-Hearted Opening: Two Chairlifts for a XXL Ambition
Launched in 1977, the construction progressed in stages, as is typical for large mountain projects. It took until 1989 for the first ski lifts to enter service, but only two chairlifts. A modest start compared to the initial dream of a full-fledged ski domain.
Meanwhile, residential buildings started to rise. The goal was clear: accommodate thousands of vacationers every winter, modeled on the major integrated resorts built elsewhere in the French Alps during the preceding decades.
Yet the financial balance remained fragile. The Isère departmental council had provided a financial guarantee for the project, a commitment that would weigh heavily later. A written question in the National Assembly, numbered 89852, would later describe the affair as a genuine financial catastrophe.
Facing these difficulties, the developers eventually abandoned the project. In 1993, construction was halted abruptly, still under development, leaving the existing structures unfinished and immobilized for many years.
Des barres d’immeubles fantômes : l’héritage brutal d’un pari manqué
After the halt of the construction, the station tried to survive a few more years. But the ax fell for good in 2003, when the remaining sports facilities stopped operating. The Saint-Honoré 1500 ski chapter officially closed.
In 2003, an auction was organized in an attempt to find a buyer. It resulted in a sale, but no purchaser stepped forward for this unfinished hotel complex, deemed too expensive to complete and too isolated to attract investors. The Ministry of Economy would later report that no special aid requests concerning the station had been filed by its services.
Since then, the site has languished in abandonment. The empty apartment blocks with yawning windows still dominate the Matheysin plateau. Today they lure a very different audience from what was envisioned in 1977: urban explorers, graffiti artists, and urban adventurers wander through these corridors frozen in time.
The place even found a second cultural life in 2019, serving as a backdrop for the show La Chaud Vive, supported by the Community of Communes of Matheysine, the Isère department, and the municipality of Saint-Honoré. A symbolic way to turn economic failure into artistic expression.
This fate resonates with recent regional developments. The neighboring Alpe du Grand Serre ski area has finally announced it would reopen for the 2026-2027 winter season, under a 30-year public service delegation signed with SATA Group. About 200 direct and indirect jobs are at stake, following a pause secured through nearly 400,000 euros raised from donors. A late echo of the difficulties Saint-Honoré 1500 faced decades earlier.
Saint-Honoré 1500 thus remains a case study in alpine tourism history. A reminder that mountains, as generous as they are in landscapes, do not forgive economic ventures built on fragile foundations. Between concrete remnants and memories of pickaxes, the Matheysin plateau still bears the traces of two failed conversions, separated by only a few decades.
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