“There were crazy people”: they remained stuck for more than two hours in the underground car park of Ikea in Montpellier this Saturday

Ce samedi, le parking souterrain d'Ikea était à saturation. Et toute la zone d'Odysseum a connu l'affluence. Midi Libre – Archives

This Saturday, January 11, 2025, with the work at Odysseum and the crowds of this first weekend of sales, the parking lots were saturated. Motorists remained stuck in the Ikea parking lot all late afternoon.

“I had storage boxes to buy, it didn't take me fifteen minutes to go back and forth to my car. But when I returned to the parking lot, at 5:30 p.m., I remained stuck in my driveway until almost 8 p.m.”

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Dominique, 67, came from Gard to do a little shopping at Ikea Montpellier this Saturday afternoon. An experience he will not relive any time soon since he was left for two and a half hours without being able to leave the underground car park. Unthinkable according to him.

“I saw the moment when people were going to get on each other's faces”

“I even called the police to tell them that if there was a fire, it could be catastrophic, there would be deaths. They warned me that it was a private place and that we had to ask security to take care of it. I tried to get someone from Ikea, it was impossible. We couldn't get out. There are roundabouts on each side, with the construction, there is only one lane and there were crazy people. There was no way out. Everything was blocked. So, people were exasperated, I saw the moment when they were going to get on each other's faces, there were children too.”

Exit through the entrance

So there were roadworks and lane reductions, but also the first weekend of sales. But the previous Saturday, outside of sales and Christmas shopping, in the afternoon, customers were already instructed to take their time in the store because the parking lot was already full. This Saturday, everything was back to normal shortly before 8 p.m. “Around 7:45 p.m., they had the reflex to get people out through the entrance, that freed up the situation. It's a shame they didn't think of it before.”

A problem already encountered

Around 8 p.m., everything was able to get back to normal. And the parking lots in the entire neighborhood emptied, because it was all the Odysseum parking areas that were very heavily used on this busy weekend for a traffic problem in the neighborhood that is not frequent but is not an exception either.

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