Athens to get a new park — or a stadium
The former military camps in Goudi in eastern central Athens may be handed over to municipal authorities to be turned into much-needed parkland, the capital’s mayor said yesterday. Following a meeting with Alternate Culture Minister Fanni Palli-Petralia, Dora Bakoyannis told journalists she had pressed for the entire 40-hectare plot to be transferred to the municipality, to become a metropolitan park. «This is a great opportunity for a longstanding demand by Athens’s residents to be met,» Bakoyannis said. «I hope, with the aid of the minister, that it will.» The former camps at Goudi were used as sports venues during the Olympics. According to sources, Palli-Petralia told Bakoyannis the park scheme might go ahead, provided the government does not decide to allow Panathinaikos, Greece’s richest soccer club, to build a new stadium there.
