Olympic venue changes will not hurt quality, minister says
Olympic projects for the 2004 Athens Games, are not being «scrapped» or «downsized,» merely «redrawn,» Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos insisted yesterday, defending the government’s decision to make changes to several sports venues where construction is under way or will start soon. The changes were made with the accord of Athens 2004, the Games organizers, and the International Olympic Committee’s Coordination Commission, whose chairman, Denis Oswald, visited Athens last week. The aim is to keep the State’s budget for the Olympics under the official limit of 4.37 billion euros. In truth, with several other infrastructure projects under way, such as roadworks, the metro extension and a new tram and suburban railway, which are not directly related to the Games but whose timetables have certainly been advanced by them, no one knows exactly how much the government is going to spend on the Olympics. Athens 2004 President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, speaking to reporters last Thursday, had mentioned that the «redrawing» of projects would save up to 300 million euros. This is a misunderstanding, Venizelos said. «The 300 million has already been saved through budget cuts by contractors in venues already under construction.» As for the new round of savings, «300 million (euros) would be too high,» the Culture Ministry’s secretary-general for the Olympics, Costas Kartalis, said. «In fact, our services are currently evaluating the savings,» which, in any case, will exceed 200 million. The changes made affect the equestrian center and shooting center, the beach volleyball installations at Neo Faliron, the hockey and baseball venues to be constructed at the site of the former Athens airport at Hellenikon (where there will be one field for each sport instead of the proposed two) and the modern pentathlon center at Goudi. These changes involve the use of temporary instead of permanent stands, changes in materials, and smaller buildings. The dressage arena at the equestrian center will not be built, but there were no details given as to the alternative space for the competition. A temporary arena for boxing, which was to have been put up at Neo Faliron, will also be scrapped in favor of an existing facility in the western suburb of Peristeri. Referring to the issue of the Karaiskaki Stadium, where the chosen contractors have refused to sign contracts, Venizelos said that the stadium could still be used to stage soccer qualifying matches and the final, «with much less rebuilding than originally planned. It will either be that, or the AEK stadium,» he said. Venizelos insisted that it was not a matter of strict construction timetables, but a matter of post-Games use. The State, he said, could not afford the cost of the upkeep of «luxurious» facilities, especially in sports with little following in Greece. «We cannot afford, say, a permanent badminton installation, even if I and all of you take up the sport, which is not to say I disparage it,» he said. He added that Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, the previous host cities, had all decided to change installation plans and that he considered this a natural thing, not the result of plans gone awry.
