ATHENS - Greece started work clearing ground on Friday for a real estate project that plans to turn a disused airport on the Athens coast into one of Europe's biggest tourist resorts, three times the size of Monaco.
After years of delays due to bureaucratic red tape, political resistance and local opposition, demolition crews began tearing down the first block of buildings out of hundreds that need to be removed from the 1,500-acre plot.
Lamda Development, which secured the long-term lease on the site in 2014, plans to build a complex of luxury homes, hotels, offices, a yachting marina and a casino at a total cost of 8 billion euros.
"This is a project which symbolises a new Greece," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose Conservative government has promised to speed up the project, told a launch ceremony.
Lamda, which first outlined its plan in 2013, has said it will spend about 2 billion euros in the first five years of an estimated 25-year construction phase, building two skyscrapers for offices and a hotel, and about 800 residences and a park.
The Hellinikon project “ will make all Greeks proud” Odysseas Athanasiou, Chief Executive Officer in Lamda Development said on Friday welcoming the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the site of works in the former airport of Hellinikon.
“ From here, where airplanes took off, the Hellinikon project can become a take-off symbol in the new era for our country,” Athanasiou said and praised the government’s devicive contribution to the start of works. He also thanked Lamda Development’s basic shareholder for its vision on the project and for supporting it for seven years, while a few months ago it reiterated its confidence in the country and the economy by investing more than 350 million euros.
Athanasiou said infrastructure projects will begin in the first half of 2021, among them a coastal front park, one of the biggest in the world. The project will create a coastal front that will leave behind “ this grey landscape that you see right now”.
The vision of LAMDA for the development of the former Hellinikon airport is the design of a pioneering development for Athens, with emphasis on the creation of a world class Metropolitan Park covering an area of 2,000,000 sq.m., as well as the enhancement of the Coastal Front, both fully accessible to the public. The project consists of an integrated urban development model that will combine the area’s natural beauty and unique inherent characteristics with landmark buildings and state-of-the-art infrastructure. The ‘green’ and ‘smart’ design approach of the project will offer world-class services and amenities while improve the standard of living of the entire Attica area’s inhabitants.
It plans to demolish about a third of about 900 buildings on the site in the coming months and aims to start building infrastructure in the first half of 2021, Chief Executive Officer Odisseas Athanasiou said during the ceremony.
[su_youtube url="https://youtu.be/Z8ErT9NFpvA" width="700" title="opening of the biggest Greek project"]See more here https://thehellinikon.com/the-vision/
