When it opened, in 1938, Kalamaki Airfield, as it was then known, stretched out between the Aegean Sea and the countryside of East Attica, five miles south of central Athens. By the time it closed, in 2001, Ellinikon International Airport, as it had become, was in the middle of the city, engulfed by an ocean of apartment buildings. Operating at well over capacity and unable to expand, it was replaced by Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos, which entered service in anticipation of the 2004 summer Olympics. After closure, in preparation for the games, the section of the disused airport nearest the city center was converted into sports facilities—the grass between runways became hockey, baseball, and softball fields, the aircraft-repair hangar transformed into a basket- and handball arena, while a whitewater course for canoe and kayak slaloming was dug where cargo services once operated. But, following the Olympics, the sports facilities were abandoned, after which the 2008 financial crash and the ensuing Greek government-debt crisis saw to it that the future of the 1,500-acre site would hang in the balance for well over a decade.
All of that changed in 2020 when demolition work began as part of a 25-year redevelopment program, master-planned by Foster + Partners, that will see Ellinikon become a new residential neighborhood, coastal resort, and 600-acre park. “The largest urban regeneration project in Europe,” according to Lamda Development, the Greek real-estate company behind the estimated-$8 billion scheme, it will include thousands of new homes, upmarket shopping malls and hotels, a business park, sports facilities, a mega-yacht marina, and other leisure destinations such as a cultural center in Eero Saarinen’s East Terminal building (1960–69), one of several airport structures that will be preserved and repurposed. In 2021, in a shrewd marketing move, Lamda opened the Ellinikon Experience Park, a tiny chunk of the much bigger Ellinikon Metropolitan Park (slated for completion in 2030), as well as a giant visitor-information center inside the renovated Air Force Hangar C (one of three hangars at Ellinikon landmarked by the Greek culture ministry).
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