The official opening of Hellinikon, the largest urban regeneration project in Europe, took place in the presence of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the main shareholder of Lamda Development Spyros Latsis who due to force majeure, as he said, sent a greeting online from Switzerland, the managing director of the company Odysseas Athanasiou, ministers, representatives of the Church, the parties and the local municipality.
The prime minister mentioned in his greeting that the main part of the reconstruction of Hellinikon is formally starting, a project without precedent for our country, as he pointed out.
“27 months ago the schedule is being met and the changes around us are evident. The famous slogan for the bulldozers of Hellinikon has been heard many times, sometimes to hide delays and obstacles and sometimes to sound the anxiety to start the project. The words have now become action. And with the Hellinikon we said it and did it. We believed in this emblematic project and promoted it from the first day, overturning outdated attitudes and perceptions, a tangle that the competent ministries of Development, Finance, and Culture managed to unravel. Now we are turning to the future with the vision of Spyros Latsis taking flesh and bones” said Mitsotakis.
Continuing, he mentioned that the first relevant discussion took place in 2007 and after going through 40 waves in 7 years, the project with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras got on track in 2014. “Since then, a lot has been heard, even the transformation of the area into a social… vegetable garden. In 2016, under the pretext of contract revision or bureaucratic hurdles, there were delays again, until 2019 when the project moved into a new phase. The work started for good in 2021 and since then the water has entered the channel and is flowing rapidly.”
The prime minister emphasised that the benefit of this great investment is important to spill out not only to the region but also to all Greeks and this is what the government seeks with all the big investments we are promoting. “In 2022 we had an all-time record in Foreign Direct Investment this year and we hope that record will be broken next year as well. It is a project financed by private funds and will add 2.4% to the GDP, over 14 billion euros in public funds will create more than 70,000 jobs”.
