With the baseball and softball games over and the Greeks left with stadiums for sports they don’t know how to play, many Athenians hope the Olympic complex in this seaside suburb will become something their city sorely lacks: a huge public park.
“We don’t have anyplace like Central Park in New York City,” said Vasilis Lanes, the former University of Connecticut basketball player who directs sports programs for the municipality of Helliniko.
Athens 2004 organizers built cutting-edge venues for basketball, baseball, softball, fencing, field hockey, canoeing and kayaking here on the former site of an international airport and a U.S. military base.
But it’s unclear what will happen to those facilities and the main Olympic complex in the northern suburb of Maroussi after the flame is extinguished Sunday.
Parks advocates saw the Olympics as a prime opportunity to spruce up the country’s capital. Athenians have fewer parks per capita than the inhabitants of any European capital.
Preparations for the Summer Games drove the completion of several massive public-works projects in Athens, a smoggy, overcrowded metropolis of about 5 million.
Environmentalists hailed the new tram, the metro system and the recently opened suburban rail line. A long-awaited walkway connecting major archeological sites made the city more friendy for pedestrians. And Athens boasts some 250 buses that run on natural gas, more than any city in Europe.
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But only 10 percent of the trees that were promised have been planted.
Landscaping apparently was not a high priority in the rush to finish stadiums and other necessary projects in the days and weeks before the Games. Trees planted at the main Olympic complex in the midsummer heat already are wilting.
“It’s a beautiful complex, but there is dirt all around it,” said Nikos Charalambides, executive director of Greenpeace Greece. “If you plant a tree in the middle of July, then obviously you are dooming it.”
The complex at Maroussi includes the main stadium for the Opening and Closing Ceremony and track and field, the gymnastics hall, the velodrome and the swimming pool. Maroussi also is home to the media village and the centers for print and broadcast journalists.
The media village, like the Olympic Village for athletes, will be sold to homebuyers. What happens to the rest of the sprawling complex will not be determined until after the Games, Mayor Panayiotis Tzannikos said.
“There is no plan for it,” he said. “It can be put to a lot of uses. It will not be solely an athletic complex. We will work with private interests to develop the site, and I think we will need the expertise and experience of foreign companies in this endeavor.”
Advocates instead are focusing on turning three other Olympic sites into parks or nature areas.
They are calling on the government to create a waterfront esplanade at Paleo Faliro, where the 10,000-seat beach volleyball stadium rose near the royal-blue waters of the Saronic Gulf.
“Barcelona took a seaside area that was a dump and turned it into an esplanade that has the highest property values in the city and attracts people of all ages to stroll along the waterfront,” Charalambides said of the Spanish city that hosted the 1992 Summer Games.
Environmentalists also want authorities to restore wetlands that were diverted to pool water for the Olympic rowing venue at Schinias. The area would be used for environmental education and bird-watching, Charalambides said.
The centerpiece of the post-Olympic greening effort would be a massive “Metropolitan Park” at Helliniko.
Under one proposal, about 20 percent of the land would be sold to private interests. That could generate more than $500 million to finance the development of a park.
But the soaring costs of putting on the Games could dash those hopes.
The bill for the Olympics could rise to $8.5 billion, Greek Deputy Finance Minister Petros Doukas said last week. That would be almost $3 billion more than was budgeted.
The shortfall could force the government to sell or lease Olympic and Paralympic venues, Doukas said.
Greek taxpayers could face an even greater burden when the Olympic deficit is fully tabulated.
“When we see the real costs, all these plans could be left in a drawer, and the land will be sold to reduce the debt,” Charalambides said.
Athens is dotted with pleasant, leafy squares. Yet the only major park in central Athens is the National Garden, which has gravelly walking paths and park benches but no large open space.
Lanes thinks Athenians deserve better. They can do without the baseball and softball stadiums, he said, because they do not know much about those sports and would make better use of open parkland.
“We want to have a park where you can go and spend four or five hours with your family,” Lanes said. “If [the Metropolitan Park proposal] does not happen, then we will lose the last chance for Athens to become a more human city.”