The China Mail - Greece's ambitious 'smart city' by the sea takes shape

At their feet, construction machinery stirs up dust.

The eight-billion-euro ($8.5-billion) project financed by private funds is, according to its backers, a symbol of Greece's renaissance after the years of financial stagnation that saw investors flee the country.

Critics, however, see it more as a future "ghetto for the rich".

It is hard to imagine that 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Acropolis, a new city "three times the size of Monaco" will rise from the ground by 2036, according to Odisseas Athanasiou, chief executive of the group Lamda that owns the site.

One of Europe's largest urban regeneration projects, the Ellinikon initiative features plans for villas, two hotels, shopping centres, a university, a marina and other buildings.

It will also feature the Riviera Tower, which would be Athens's tallest skyscraper when it is completed at the end of 2026.

Around 30,000 people are expected to live on the 6.2-square-kilometre (2.4-square-mile) site on what for decades was Athens's international airport.

- A 'smart city' -

The former terminal, a listed building since the airport relocated in 2001, is to be converted into an exhibition hall.

During the 2004 Olympic Games, Ellinikon became a sports hub and hosted sports competitions including canoeing and hockey.

But the facilities were subsequently abandoned, and then came the financial crisis, which hit the Greeks hard.

Solidarity groups created a self-managed garden, a community grocery shop and a free medical centre at Ellinikon, to make up for the shortcomings of a virtually bankrupt state.

Refugees were also temporarily housed in the derelict stadiums during the migrant crisis of 2015.

Amid the wave of privatisations imposed by the country's EU-IMF creditors, Athens was forced to sell Ellinikon.

Lamda, a holding company specialising in property development, investment and management, won the bid in 2014 for less than a billion euros.

The company is listed on the stock exchange and majority-owned by Greek tycoon Spiros Latsis.

Lamda CEO Athanasiou says the company is building "the largest coastal park in the world", with a third of the surface area reserved for green areas accessible to all.

Ellinikon will be a "smart city" with advanced technological solutions, said other project managers who escorted an AFP team in a mini-bus through the huge construction site.

- An 'offshore colony' -

"We're building from scratch, which is a major advantage," Athanasiou said in front of a huge model of the project.

"Cities like Singapore, Copenhagen and Amsterdam have done incredible things in terms of technology. But they have had to adapt what they have developed to an existing infrastructure," he said.

In total, the park will have 8,000 to 9,000 homes.

The most luxurious apartments in the Riviera Tower can cost up to 25 million euros, Athanasiou said.

The least expensive will sell for around 400,000 euros, a price entirely unaffordable for many Athenians, critics say.

"This is not a real estate development project, it's an 'offshore' colony," said Nikos Belavilas, director of the urban environment laboratory at the National Technical University of Athens.

"We will have a gated community isolated from the city, with skyscrapers and casinos for the oil-rich," he said, at a time when Athens is more in need of social or student housing.

The concrete-clad capital, with its jumbled streets that have grown out of control, is cruelly lacking in green areas.

Ellinikon, with its parks and beaches, represented "an opportunity to have a large urban green space", Belavilas said.

- 'Dire' -

It could have become an Athenian Tempelhof, he said, referring to the former West Berlin airport which was transformed into a huge park open to all in the centre of the German capital, he said.

The Ellinikon project is "dire on several levels", especially in terms of the "macro-economic management of the country", one Athenian architect said on condition of anonymity.

Other Greeks complain that the state simply flogged off the site.

Athanasiou counters that when the privatisation took place "we were the only ones to respond to the call for tenders".

He said the project would "strengthen the country's credibility abroad, which was damaged during the years of crisis".

Up to 80,000 jobs will be created and the Greek state will reap more than 14 billion euros in tax revenue once the project is completed, he said.

J.Thompson--ThChM