Lamda Development CEO: Helleniko project will be ‘green’, ‘smart’ and rely on recycling

A top Lamda Development executive on Friday promised the “green”, “smart” and state-of-the-art management of all water, refuse and energy resources at the looming Helleniko project in coastal southeast Athens.

Speaking at an Economist conference in Athens less than two weeks after the Greek state and Lamda’s subsidiary for the Helleniko privatization signed a long-term concession deal – accompanied by the first 300-million-euro payment funneled to state coffers – Lamda CEO Odysseas Athanasiou said the massive privatization is both very diverse and at the same time designed to meet the highest standards of environmental protection.

Speaking during the same conference, Development & Investments Minister Adonis Georgiadis again repeated that the center-right government calculates that 10,000 job spots will be created during the construction phase, along with some 70,000 permanent positions once the entire project is concluded.

The outspoken Georgiadis, and the entire Mitsotakis government, has investment a good chunk of its “political capital” in eliminating the last bureaucratic hurdles blocking the iconic privatization and getting it off the drawing boards.

The project, valued by ATHEX-listed Lamda Development at roughly eight billion euros, is billed as the biggest real estate regeneration project in the Mediterranean and possibly in Europe at the moment.

The minister also dismissed criticism that the massive project, along a stretch of the so-called Athenian “Riviera” and on a tract of land twice the size of Monaco, will benefit only the wealthy elite.
“A very large park will be created; a beachfront extending over a kilometer will be freed up; they’ll be restaurants, retail parks, tech centers etc. It’s like we’re building a small capital within the capital,” he said, referring to the greater Athens area.