Posted on 03/05/2005 7:12:52 PM PST by Pikamax
Venues rot as Greece loses its Olympic gains
Helena Smith in Athens Sunday March 6, 2005 The Observer
Six months after the Athens Olympics, all is not well. Around the canoe-kayak course, in the city that hosted the world's 'unforgettable, dream games', lights that illuminated the site now swing, hopelessly, from cords of broken wire. It is hard not to miss the galloping necrosis enveloping so many of the 36 venues either purpose-built or upgraded for the Games. For the neglect does not end here. On the other side of the Olympic facility, in the inner sanctum of the world-class basketball hall, the roof is leaking. Buckets, dexterously placed around its carpeted stadium, collect droplets the size of large coins. Across town, on the ancient Marathon route, the drains are clogged. They are also blocked at the multi-million-pound building that served as the press centre during the Games. And, at the rowing centre in Skoinias, the waters have turned stagnant brown. There, officials wonder what to do with a facility now widely decried as an environmental disaster.
One of the smallest nations ever to host the globe's biggest sports event, Greece had hoped the Olympics would transform its citizens' lives as never before. Instead, they are discovering that the 16-day bonanza may have been pure folly. This week, as their government prepares to release a long-awaited bill stipulating the venues' 'post-Olympic usage', many are wondering whether staging the Games was little more than an exercise in economic flagellation.
The biggest Olympics ever, and the most expensive in terms of security, the event is believed to have cost about £7 billion, five times more than originally expected. Such a bill, say economists, will take at least two decades to pay off with Greeks as yet unborn footing most of it.
'The hefty post-Olympics bill is already being compounded by the devaluation of the sports venues,' opined the authoritative daily Kathimerini, summing up the mood. 'And all the while, the collective memory of the euphoria of the Games continues to fade.'
Last week, the country's Alternate Culture Minister, Fani Palli-Petralia, admitted what Hellenes had feared most. 'We didn't have a reliable post-Olympics plan,' said the politician who headed preparations for the Games. 'Many venues were designed without their post-Olympics use in mind.'
On Tuesday, exactly 205 days after the Games opened in spectacular style, Athens's centre-right government will advertise around two dozen of the installations at one of the world's grandest real-estate fairs in Cannes. Officials hope that by showcasing the facilities, constructed in cities across Greece, international investors will be lured into snapping up lucrative leases, boosting the country's tourism.
'We've had to work through endless documents to identify what the exact legal position and permissible uses of the facilities are,' sighed Christos Hadjiemmanuil, who heads the state-run company set up to oversee the sites. 'They [the Socialist former administration] were more concerned about not facing resistance during the building process than coming up with a strategy for the post-Olympic Games period.'
Cities bidding for future Olympics might learn a lesson or two, say Greek officials now working overtime to devise ways of cap italising on the extraordinary expense. Just maintaining the installations amounts to €60 million (£41.3m) a year. Since the Games, the eerily empty stadia have been rented out on short-term leases to the likes of pop singer Nick Cave, partying bank boards and the German car manufacturer BMW - a far cry from what most Greeks had envisaged.
'Financially the Games were a disaster,' says Hadjiemmanuil, a 41-year-old finance lawyer seconded from the London School of Economics to oversee the transition. 'We didn't need so many permanent venues; a lot of them could have been temporary. If London wins the [2012] bid, preparations could easily be a lot cheaper.'
But despite misgivings about overspending, the bespectacled academic says he is convinced the facilities are both 'viable and valuable... It would be very easy to convert some of the facilities to low-end commercial uses, like supermarkets for instance, but that's not the point,' he insists. 'The point is to find large-scale solutions that bring together culture, sports, entertainment, leisure and tourism.'
Montreal is just paying of the enormous debt from the '76 Olympics with the non-retractable roofed stadium sitting empty 360/24.
Greek by any other name still means taking it up the a**
They will have dissolved by that time.
Grease, er, Greece: What an appropriately named country...
Our greatest economic weapon against China is the upcoming Olympics.
I just had my best laugh of the day reading this article.
These countries go to enormous lengths to win a contract to build these facilities, and often there is no plan at all on what to do with them after the two weeks of pleasure and temporary profits.
Maroons...
One could pick up 'The Silverdome' cheap these days if you asked nicely. The greatest indoor stadium ever built so far. But decades later they still haven't figgerd' out to how direct traffic in front of the joint...
Put ten drachmas on "Galloping Necrosis" to win.
Well, I intend doing my bit for the Greek economy this year.
Two week vacation in Rhodes booked! And feet just itching to get there.
I LOVE the Greek islands! No place in Europe compares for a nice relaxing vacation with great food, good weather, and really nice people. (Of course, Ireland is great..the weather, it a bit tempramental though. And we do have Guinness! *S*)
Good thinkin' there, Greece. Maybe you folks should have researched this crap a bit more before diving in. Perhaps all of the olympic stuff can be advertised as "modern ruins" to tourists.
WHy should this surprise anyone? The facilities were slapped together as cheaply as possible.
A good chunk of New York's '64 World's Fair is STILL rusting away in full view of every visitor going to and from JFK. And not little refreshment stands, either: big, giant, padlocked pavilions that haven't seen a broom or paintbrush since LBJ.
Would any of you be shocked to know Queens has been a Democrat monopoly all these years? Didn't think so.
I'm rooting for Paris to receive the next games. I look forward to the strain the Olympics will put on their already depressed economy.
There is a reason that Grease (sp) is full of ruins instead of being full of perfectly preserved artifacts.
How could a water droplet (from a leaking roof) be a size of large coin? Are their largest coins about 1/8"? Or did they somehow manage to reduce gravity there? Then Nobel in Physics is in order.
Doesn't Greece still have some stuff left over from the first Olympic Games? Hmmm, I think I've detected a pattern here.
"Lose the games that nobody cares about like curling..."
Well, curling's a winter sport. You never hear about how Winter Olympics prove to be financial disasters for the host cities - are they?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.