Last obstacle for Hellenikon investment project lifted by Greek court

ATHENS – Some 18 years after it closed, an 8-billion euro ($8.84 billion) plan to transform the abandoned Hellenikon International Airport on Athens coast into a high-end use of commercial space, offices, a casino, marina park and playland got closer to beginning when Greece’s highest administrative court removed the last obstacle.

The court ruled as legal the procedures that have been followed so far concerning feasibility studies and environmental issues said Kathimerini, as the plan will also include additional environmental studies when construction begins.

The project had been essentially blocked under the 4-1/2 year reign of the former ruling Radical Left SYRIZA that had elements who didn’t want foreign companies with new Prime Minister and New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis moving swiftly to meet his promise to get it going.

He said he wants to lure more foreign investors to speed a slow recovery from a 9 1/2-year economic and austerity crisis and that the Hellenikon project would be a linchpin. It would be the third end of the so-called Athens Riviera.

The first is the planned 800-million euro ($883.41 million) renovation of the port of Piraeus by the Chinese company COSCO which operates it, that was also stymied by SYRIZA. In between is the $861 million Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on the coast.

The Greek real estate company Lamda Development that said it would buy out its partners, the Chinse company Fosun and Abu Dhabi’s Green Hills had blamed SYRIZA for the delays and said now that it was eager to begin “the visionary Elliniko project” after talks with the consortium team didn’t bring an agreement.

The site was supposed to be Europe’s largest urban park before Greece’s crisis began in 2010 and successive governments turned toward a commercial development with far less green space than had been planned.