Parisians were recently treated to the impromptu spectacle of a shirtless 26-year-old man scaling bare-handed the 59-storey Montparnasse office tower.

For many in the French capital, news reports of the vertiginous feat were another reminder – if they needed one – of how much they loathed the chocolate-brown skyscraper looming incongruously over the burnished boulevards of the Left Bank.

The spiderman exploit was not witnessed by anyone inside the 210-metre skyscraper. The Montparnasse tower was empty. The city’s most unloved building has been vacant since March. More than a half-century after its inauguration, it’s awaiting a long-overdue facelift. The wait may be long.

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The Montparnasse is despised by Parisians as an eyesore, but it has also failed functionally. The glass-and-steel skyscraper, constructed in 1973, is disconnected from its urban environment – it coldly shuns Parisians. The underground shopping concourses have been virtually deserted for decades, with many boutiques boarded up and defaced with graffiti. The surrounding residential tower blocks are bleak and desolate.

Nearly a decade ago, bold plans were announced to give the tower complex a makeover. It was to be transformed into a translucent, eco-friendly structure covered in vegetation with terraced gardens and a rooftop greenhouse. The renovation – featuring a luxury hotel, student housing, and recreational spaces – was supposed to be completed by 2023. Three years later, the project is still stalled. The tower’s multiple owners – one is billionaire Xavier Niel whose media holdings include the left-leaning newspaper Le Monde – are fighting........

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