ATHENS: Hopes for Greece’s struggling economy rose last week when the government approved a transformational scheme to turn Athens’ dilapidated coastal Olympics complex and abandoned Hellinikon airport into a swanky new resort, business and residential district.
Work on the $7.9bn development will start in just six months, state minister Alekos Flabouraris said on Friday, 2 June, after the country’s privatisation agency gave the nod to the scheme, media reported.
Billed as “Europe’s largest urban mixed-use development project”, it is being spearheaded by Greek developer, Lamda, which has been joined by Chinese conglomerate Fosun and the Abu Dhabi investor, Eagle Hills.
Covering 6.2 million square metres, the project will end a period of limbo for a sprawling urban territory comprising aquatic venues not used since the 2004 Olympics and Athens’ old international airport, Hellinikon, abandoned in 2001 and used in recent years as a refugee camp, with hundreds of migrants setting up tents in the old arrivals terminal.
Greek police last week began removing the migrant population, which reports say had reduced from a peak of 3,000 to around 600.
Lamda claims the scheme, called The Hellinikon, will attract a million tourists a year, and that it will create 10,000 jobs in the construction phase, and 75,000 when it is fully operating. Lamda also claims that it will contribute 2.4% of Greece’s total GDP and funnel $10bn into state coffers over 25 years.
The scheme will have residential, business and retail districts, plus a marina and revitalised beaches along 3.5km of coastline. A centrepiece will be a 2.6-million-sq-m park, comprising 42% of the entire site.
Greece committed to sell off state assets under the terms of the international bailout keeping its economy afloat since 2010.
The report says that Friday’s announcement came as Greece’s statistics service, Elstat, said the economy expanded in the first three months of 2017 by 0.4%, contrary to expectations. That marks an improvement on the final quarter of 2016 when GDP contracted by 1.1%.
