A crucial halfway point for soccer ground
When the location of the new Panathinaikos soccer ground in Votanikos was announced, some people – not all of them pessimists – expressed doubts. The objective seemed clear – to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Athenian club in a few months’ time at a magnificent soccer ground of European standards. But there was a lot of talk and very little action: It took five years to demolish just a few shacks in a neighborhood known as the Korean Market. Votanikos, by general admission, was a very different proposition. Not even the Olympic Games wrought changes in the living fabric of the city, areas where there had been economic and social activity. This is in the heart of Greek bureaucracy, just hundreds of meters from the headquarters of the largest (and slowest-moving) public organizations. Now many people are perturbed. Most of them are friends of the soccer club, who are keen to see the dream come true. And there is always the precedent of their rivals Olympiakos, who acquired their new ground in record time. But rivalrous passions and overheated reports in the sports tabloids leave little room for an answer to the basic question: Can work begin in midsummer on building the new ground? Delays The lack of any real news on the Votanikos front for the past three months has fueled a sense of embarrassment and subdued anxiety. Are there just too many problems? Have we got caught up in a bureaucratic and town-planning muddle when there was the much easier solution of the Hellenikon site? No. This is practically the only thing on which everyone involved agrees (Panathinaikos Soccer Team, the Amateur Club, the City of Athens and the special purpose company formed for the refurbishment). The main stakeholders in the project, the soccer club and the City of Athens, admit there have been minor delays. Theodoros Behrakis, president of the special purpose company Dipli Anaplasi SA and the former mayor of Athens, attributes the delays to the changes of personnel that inevitably followed the municipal elections in October. «The adjustment period is over,» he said. But rumor and the sports papers have highlighted another factor – the Amateur Club and its president, Pavlos Yiannakopoulos. The latter has not signed the cooperation agreement with the City of Athens. Is the Amateur Club really a problem? Not for the soccer ground itself. The club has no means of blocking the construction work. By its delay in signing, it is trying to establish the same rights of use at Votanikos that it enjoyed at the old ground on Alexandras Avenue. But in any case, nobody wants to upset the Amateur Club, least of all the City of Athens, which wants the refurbishment to proceed and the demolition of the old grounds. What are the other sources of delay? The prospect of a Council of State ruling is less daunting than in the past. Most observers assume the appeal will be rejected but are anxious to hear the thinking behind the decision, which they believe may indicate how the council would rule in future on an almost certain appeal when the construction permit is issued. By contrast, the Gypsy settlement is a considerable problem. Athens Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis seems determined not to tolerate any rash action. His town-planning adviser, Tassia Lagoudaki, explained, «We are in contact with the general secretariat of the Attica Region so as to deal with the issue of resettling these people.» And she reassures the friends of Panathinaikos, «The dual refurbishment is a top priority for the mayor, as is any initiative that benefits the city.» What about the timetable? Behrakis believes that work will be able to start in summer. «The thing for us is to work, to stay on the bike, to not stop and fall off.»
