The politics of PAO’s new football stadium

Introduction

The low capacity of old stadia, new specifications set by international governing bodies, and new sport consumption patterns are driving up the demand for new sports stadia. Stadia with new specifications and increased capacity may guarantee higher revenues for sports clubs and can also help to boost urban economic growth and civic pride. However, the construction of new stadia engages several social actors with different and often conflicting interests that precipitate political disputes.

A dispute of this type arose eight years ago—and is still in a holding pattern—around the relocation of one of Greece’s major football (soccer) clubs, Panathinaikos Athletikos Omilos (PAO), to a site within the same urban area. PAO, a professional private club and a member of the 16-team Super League, is one of the oldest and most popular football clubs throughout Greece, not just in its home city of Athens, the nation’s capital (PAO, 2012). The Super League is at the top of Greek football’s three-tier organizational structure, with Football League 1 and Football League 2 the remaining leagues. Most football stadia are owned either by the Greek government or by local governments (Stadia, 2012). Of the 16 Super League stadia, seven are the property of football clubs, including PAO. While all Super League clubs are privately owned, most lack modern stadia to host their fans. The only exception to this is the new Georgios Karaiskakis stadium, expressly built within a 14-month period for the 2004 Olympics and currently licensed by the Greek Olympic Committee to the Piraeus-based club Olympiakos, PAO’s long-time rival. Thus, like other football clubs that are eager either to relocate to new modern stadia or refurbish existing ones, PAO elected to relocate.

Since Greece’s admission to the European Union (EU) in the 1980s, local politicians have tried to help the city of Athens compete with European and global cities and develop through a process of Europeanization and globalization. This can be observed in the field of sports in the city’s repeated bids to host the Olympic Games, which were backed by the Greek government. In the specific case of PAO, local government politicians initiated a growth coalition with the sole aim of urban regeneration based on a new stadium. However, this initiative was opposed by a group of local citizens, and the case finally ended in the Supreme Court, which severely impeded the coalition’s progress towards its goals.

The purpose of this paper is to address this conflict over PAO’s relocation within a framework of urban politics. This conflict represents an interesting topic of research for a number of reasons. First, the case received extensive publicity throughout Greece and became a hotly debated issue among supporters and opponents, including politicians, business people, media, academics, football fans, and the general public. Second, this dispute has not been the subject of analytical social science research, and the sports literature can benefit from research on disputes of this type. Third, while there is a great deal of evidence from academic research on political disputes over the construction of new private stadia in the US, little information is available on those in Europe. Fourth, this sports stadium-centered economic development project in Athens was not successful from the proponents’ viewpoint, which in itself is a crucial feature, as most new stadium projects (at least in the US) are successful. Fifth, Athens and Greece provide an essential context within which to examine the politics of stadium proposals. Greece is a small EU country that hosted the 2004 Olympics with considerable cost overruns. The economic downturn beginning around 2009 has affected both the city and the state in a variety of ways, and the new stadium project was halted by the Court at this time. Equally important, the research community is divided as to whether urban political theories of urban regimes and growth coalitions that were born in the US are applicable in Europe, and this case study offers some evidence in the area of sports stadia construction.

Following a review of the relevant literature on urban regimes and growth coalitions, the methodology of this study is presented based on the case study approach, addressing urban politics in the context of a local initiative to construct a new private football stadium for PAO. Then the essence of the dispute is described and analyzed, before reaching conclusions. This study provides an analysis of the actions of the coalition of developers and the opposing citizens’ group, the factors that impeded the coalition’s goal, and a brief comparison of the perspectives of the US and Greek judiciaries on sports stadia construction as public goods, as a Supreme Court decision halted the project.

Urban regimes and local growth coalitions

While proponents of new private sports stadia promise a positive economic impact for the city, the question of who pays for such projects remains difficult to resolve. Sports stadia are becoming increasingly commercialized, constituting manifestations of global capital flows congregated at particular locales, crystallizing class divisions, separating the elite from the potentially unruly, and conducting surveillance that may be perceived as intrusive to civil liberties (Frank and Steets, 2010). The process of building private sports stadia with public money is more suitable to plutocracy and oligarchy than to democracy (Bennett, 2012; Delaney and Eckstein, 2003; Sullivan, 2001). Moreover, there are significant questions about the local social costs of these projects. Sports stadia can generate civic pride, image improvement, and increased community visibility, but can also create congestion, vandalism, graffiti, noise, and litter. These are frequently stated as problems that sports stadia bring to urban areas in Europe and are common causes of concern for local residents (Bale, 1990, 1993; Bale and Moen, 1995; Churchman, 1995; Jones, 2002).

Little evidence is available from research on political disputes over private new football stadia construction in Europe, with the UK as a minor exception. Without conducting an in-depth analysis of the cases wherein football teams such as Oxford United, Portsmouth, and Bristol Rovers tried to relocate, Bale (1990, 2000) contends that the more noxious activities of football clubs were met with resistance by locals, who were not powerless actors:

Indeed, given changes that are currently taking place in British football, resistance through local activism seems to have been remarkably successful. Such activism seems to have occurred in two kinds of situation. The first is where clubs have been involved in certain in situ attempts to diversify their economic activities and the second where clubs have considered relocation (1990: 331).

Bale’s contentions, however, are not based on a systematic study of the cases within a suitable social theory. Which social theory can explain the emergence and resolution of political disputes over the construction of new private stadia in urban European spaces?

The modern theory used to interpret urban politics is dominated by two influential paradigms, “urban regimes” and “growth machines” or local “growth coalitions,” both of which were developed based on US-style capitalism. Urban Regime Theory (URT) was conceived by the American political scientists Stephen Elkin and Clarence Stone. Elkin’s (1987) main contribution to this paradigm was his effort to define a socially just urban politics, given that cities’ most powerful institutions are firmly rooted in the business sector and that civic organizations are funded and staffed by business-oriented individuals. Stone’s (1989) main contribution was his idea of “social production,” which refers to the way in which local politicians struggle to forge alliances with the private sector to secure resources (symbolic and/or material) that are necessary to ensure public action. Stone (1989) defines urban regimes as “the informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interests function together in order to be able to make and carry out governing decisions” (p. 6). Those governing decisions or public actions are not outcomes of hierarchical government structures, but rather actions of coalitions of forces engaged in “governance.” One important element of urban regimes is their continuity and the existence of anti-regime forces, as argued in Stone’s (1989) classic monograph on URT. Stone proposes that in Atlanta, “one governing coalition…formed and held sway over its challengers for more than forty years” (p. 183). Finally, regime governance is related to broad economic development issues in the city (see, e.g., Stone’s 2005 work on urban school reforms).

Mossberger and Stoker (2001) suggest that URT has considerably facilitated the analysis of urban politics beyond the formal institutions of government outside of North America. However, the discussion among European scholars on the exportability of URT is inconclusive. Some scholars are critical about the value of imported US urban theories and methods in Europe (e.g., Davies, 2002, 2003; Kantor and Savitch, 2005; Wood, 2004). Their main contention is that in Europe, the material interdependence between political and economic elites is either weak or non-existent, preventing the creation of urban regimes as stable urban coalitions engaged in governance, and that “social production” is carried out by the state. Conversely, some others hold a positive view. Henry and Paramio-Salcines (1999) advocate that the regime approach can provide a useful framework in which to analyze the mobilization of interests behind the development of a symbolic project—for example, the revival of deindustrializing Sheffield as a city of sport. Some observe the emergence of urban regimes in Europe either as immature, unintended, and uncoordinated outcomes of localized crisis-management strategies (Brenner, 2009) or as well-organized informal coalitions that gain legitimacy through the inclusion of local authorities in leadership positions (see Holman’s 2007 UK study). Others go as far as suggesting that the traditional relationship between the central state and local political actors is becoming inappropriate, giving way to the mode of governance suggested by URT (see Pinson’s 2012 French study).

Local growth coalitions (LGCs) are a product of viewing the city as a “growth machine,” an idea initiated by Molotch (1976) and developed further by Logan and Molotch (1987) into a thesis. According to this thesis, various actors in the city with disparate interests form coalitions driven by the shared need to enhance the “exchange value” of land and thus expand growth in their city. Land exchange values increase with development projects and thus generate profits. Such coalitions include land developers and real estate agents, business leaders, financial entities, sports teams, and local newspaper owners. The commitment of these LGCs to economic growth—alleged to be a “public good” for the city—bonds their members together, giving them a hegemonic role. However, other stakeholders may place a different value on land, emphasizing its “use value.” For example, environmentalists value land as an environmental asset to be protected, heritage preservation activists want the land preserved for its historical significance, and poverty activists expect land to be developed in a way that will provide affordable housing (Donald, 2006). Therefore, this conflict over the exchange vs. the use value of land provides an understanding of the politics of urban space.

The LGC thesis intersects with URT on only one point: local elites tend to exert an overwhelming influence on urban affairs, resulting in opposition. The LGC thesis is distinct in that it places special emphasis on the common motivation of its members for “urban growth.” In LGCs, the material interdependence between political and economic elites is not strong enough to create urban regimes in the form of stable urban coalitions engaged in governance. In contrast, regime continuity is an integral component of URT that does not necessarily apply to the “growth machine” or LGC thesis.

The above differences render URT either weak or inappropriate for the study of sports stadia construction, as in addition to the distinctions made above, the LGCs that promote stadia are usually transient single-objective coalitions. Some US-based research has documented that fact in great detail (Bennett and Spirou, 2006), and the overall study of local US politics in this area shows that various actors act as LGCs to influence local political processes that favor projects serving essentially private interests (Brown and Paul, 2000; Friedman et al., 2004; Schimmel, 2006; Smith and Ingham, 2003). As US cities are competing to grow by attracting businesses, new stadia are principally financed by special local taxes, although these public subsidies can take on various and complex forms. Publicly funded construction, renovation, straight cash payments, free land, free rent, infrastructure, the assumption of debts, tax exemptions for creditors receiving interest on bonds, and property and sales tax exemptions create an opaque picture of stadia financing sources (Sag et al., 2013). While political disputes frequently emerge over the construction of new stadia, they usually end following a local referendum in favor of the project. In the period 1984–2000, 60% of such referenda were successful for the stadium proponents (Brown and Paul, 2002).

Studying new stadia construction across the US, Delaney and Eckstein define LGCs as

institutional and ideological alliances between and among headquartered local corporations, local government, and the local mainstream media. These coalitions articulate and influence social policies intended to stimulate economic growth within certain prescribed parameters… (2007: 334–335).

While Delaney and Eckstein acknowledge variations in the outcomes of battles over stadium construction initiatives, they maintain that more often than not the outcome is in favor of the elites, even in the face of significant grassroots resistance. The distribution of political resources and the institutional setting in which these battles occur provide LGCs with distinct advantages that are not available to their opponents. Local elites exercise their power as the group with the dominant ideology (local growth for the “public good”) long before the matter becomes a political dispute. This implies that opponents to such projects are in a rather disadvantageous position. However, the core content of the dominant ideology of LGCs, “local development,” is becoming obsolete, as emphasized by studies on the growth dimensions of new stadia (Coates, 2007; Wilbur, 2000). Therefore, it may be more effective to call upon the public’s “community self-esteem” and “community collective conscience” to build favor for the plan (Eckstein and Delaney, 2002). Finally, according to Delaney and Eckstein (2008), LGCs can be “strong” if they have the local media on their side and “weak” otherwise.

Again, European researchers have questioned the ability of the LGC thesis to interpret phenomena such as urban “partnerships” in the UK, arguing that a better theory of local government is necessary and that the struggle over “exchange” and “use” values must be given more thorough consideration (Macleod and Goodwin, 1999). No evidence has yet been gathered on the value of LGC in the construction of private European sports stadia, and any disagreements over the value of applying this paradigm in European sports might benefit from an explicit reference to the classic problem of agency vs. structure, which takes a unique form in the world of sports.

Structure refers to the existence of circumstances and/or conditions within which agents operate. These conditions range from material to non-material conditions and are established by formal institutions such as the laws and regulations that govern social life, as well as by informal institutions, loosely understood as the culture that shapes behavior. Agency refers to the capacity of agents, including urban regimes and LGCs, to shape their environment (Leftwich, 2010). Therefore, the pertinent question for this study is: “What is the difference between US and European LGCs acting as agents for private sports stadia construction in the context of the particular structures and opportunities within which they function?”

In the US, there is a problem concerning the intersection of the market and political organizations with respect to sports. Sports leagues are exempt from antitrust laws and are thus able to form cartels that control the entry of other teams (Sag et al., 2013). In this way, they ward off competition and manage to keep their prices and profits high. American sports teams are able to secure public funds for new and renovated stadia by threatening to relocate elsewhere and leave their hometowns without representation in sports, or by actually relocating. American cities tend to bow to such demands. Exercising their powers for land expropriation (in US jargon, “eminent domain powers”), cities condemn private lands for use in the construction of the new stadia. Additionally, taking advantage of favorable legislation, they issue tax-exempt bonds to finance such projects. The project environmental review (ER) assesses the project’s environmental impacts. Several State Environmental Policy Acts (SEPAs) authorize state agencies to develop guidelines to ensure that an ER is prepared before any project is implemented. Some agencies elect to issue guidelines that exempt new stadia construction from ER. State legislative bodies may also introduce laws that exempt projects from ER. Some SEPAs go as far as exempting projects from ER when they are submitted to the people via referendum. In addition, cities may choose to “manage” local environmental issues according to zoning powers delegated to them by state laws or the state’s constitution (Porteshawver, 2010).

In contrast, in Europe and elsewhere, the promotion-and-relegation system allows for free entry of teams to a league upon achievement, thus avoiding the cartel problem. Private sporting teams receive either little or no money for stadium funding and do not abandon their towns, as the town’s representation is almost always secured by a local team that earns promotion within the system. Moreover, in Europe, cities do not have the power to impose taxes for the construction of private stadia (Jones, 2002), and they also lack the independence enjoyed by their American counterparts in eschewing ER, as they need to follow strict national environmental policy regulations, including relevant constitutional mandates.

While the distinctions highlighted above are valid, voices from both the research community and the media are noting that certain forms of football organization are changing in Europe, particularly in the UK (Cornwell, 2011; Nauright and Ramfjord, 2010; Williams and Hopkins, 2011). There has been a rapid increase in US ownership of football teams in England’s Barclays Premier League, and US organizational and marketing structures are exerting increased influence within the League. As Nauright and Ramfjord note: “Not unlike American sport teams, English football clubs have begun to focus on corporate hospitality with raised ticket prices, renovated stadiums, and luxury suites and corporate boxes” (2010: 436).

Although it will be very difficult to change English traditions and the powers of the governing institution of British football, the Football Association (FA), new management practices have made leading English clubs attractive to US and other investors. The US owners surely dream of replicating their model of sports leagues on a global scale and, while this may be difficult to attain, the power of money is so great that nothing can be precluded. Once the promotion-and-relegation system becomes eroded, the US model will be in place. That will also depend on whether any changes will occur in the US institutional structure, which currently favors sports league cartels. There are now voices calling for direct legislation either prohibiting the subsidizing of private sports stadia or introducing the promotion-and-relegation system (Edelman, 2008; Sag et al., 2013). The most recent rejection by the Florida Senate of a bill proposing to raise tax rates from 6% to 7% to finance the renovation of the Miami Dolphins stadium points in that direction (The New York Times, 2013).

The US model of league organization is still a long way from becoming the norm in European sports. However, the LGC thesis may be appropriate for the study of new sports stadia construction as a source of urban political disputes, as land “exchange value” interests are behind new stadia, no matter how disparate they may be. The growing market orientation of football has led to LGCs with various interests, including the promotion of what are referred to as “post-modern stadia” or “tradiums,” i.e., multi-functional spaces also offering catering, museums, hotels, and commercial malls (Bale, 2000; Paramio et al., 2008). Typical recent examples of LGCs involved in the construction of private European sports stadia are those formed to help Everton FC in the UK and the PAO football club in Greece to relocate.

In the Everton case, the club attempted a few years ago to relocate from Goodison Park, Liverpool, to Kirkby in the nearby borough of Knowsley. To achieve this, a formal single-purpose LGC was formed in Everton from the local council and a large multinational company. Everton FC had struck a deal with its prospective partners, Knowsley Borough Council and the multinational corporation Tesco PLC: the Council owned the land on which the new stadium would be constructed and Tesco would provide “enabling funds” for the scheme, as long as in addition to the stadium it would include the construction of a 24-hour Tesco Extra supermarket, 50 additional retail units, new bars, restaurants, and a hotel and leisure development. In November 2009, the coalition proved to be ineffective and was defeated within the prevailing institutional structure. The British government rejected the scheme as it violated local shopping policy (i.e., economic policy), discouraging major supermarket chains from siphoning business away from nearby towns and city centers (Kennedy, 2012). This paper will describe in detail how the PAO LGC also proved to be ineffective within an external structure in which the national government was supportive but the Supreme Court was not.

The ineffectiveness of these LGCs does not necessarily render them any different from those operating in the US. The ineffectiveness of LGCs in promoting new private sports stadia can be caused by various external structural factors that have nothing to do with the internal organizational or institutional composition of the coalition. Negative outcomes could result from factors such as referenda, state legislative actions, or even the action of a sports league. For example, the three-year dispute over an LGC’s plan to move the Sacramento Kings basketball team from Sacramento, California to Seattle, Washington and rename it the SuperSonics failed following a decision by the NBA’s relocation committee (Huffingtonpost, 2013).

Methodology

This paper uses a case study, a popular method of social science research that focuses on understanding the dynamics within a particular important case (Yin, 2009). The paper considers how a conflict arose between a local growth coalition aiming to build a new stadium for PAO and the local citizens who opposed the project. Thus, the study will use the embedded units of analysis in a single case (Yin, 2012).

Drawing on the LGC concept, this paper explores the hegemonic actions of a local growth coalition in promoting the construction of PAO’s new stadium and the counter-hegemonic actions of a group of local citizens who opposed the project. Subsequently, because the Athenian LGC was unable to achieve its goals due to a ruling by the Supreme Court of Greece, relevant rulings of US and Greek courts will be compared. This case study is valuable in the context of football stadium relocation in Southern Europe, as Stake (1995) would argue.

The paper uses a triangulation approach with the following data sources:

Material collected from the media and electronic press release sources described above was separated and organized chronologically into different categories (Hodder, 1998). Given the large volume of media reports, covering several years, they were organized into five different sets, related primarily to: (1) the Citizens’ Committee against the project and its supporters; (2) coalition supporters; (3) municipal actors; (4) the construction company; (5) general background information on the case; and (6) other annually organized media reports from 2001 to 2013. Qualitative content analysis was applied to these sets, as required by the objectives established for this paper, through multiple readings and summary presentations describing the major actors in this political dispute.

Actors in the PAO stadium dispute: roles and actions

The location selected for the new stadium, Eleonas (olive grove), is an area of approximately 9000 stremmas (slightly more than 2200 acres). This location coincides with the sacred olive grove of ancient Athens, which was used for recreation and countryside walks and was the site of Plato’s famous Academy.

For the past five decades, Eleonas has been a challenge for progressive architects and regional planners, and a variety of studies have been conducted and workshops organized to discuss the appropriate use of the site. The social pressure on the government led the Environment Ministry to issue the Presidential Decree of 1995 (a legal instrument inferior to a passed Act) designating the creation of a communal green area comprising approximately 40% of the total area, i.e., approximately 900 acres of land (Eleonas, 2012). The philosophy behind this piece of legislation was later fully adopted by the local civic group that opposed certain parts of the plan for the construction of PAO’s new stadium.

Identity and ‘hegemony’ of a strong but ineffective LGC

The LGC of developers that initiated and promoted the plan to construct a new stadium for PAO at Eleonas was led by the City of Athens, operating within a favorable external structure that included the backing of the central government. The LGC described its aim as developing a literally “abandoned” and underdeveloped urban sector of northern Athens, which would be referred to in US jargon as a “blighted” area. The LGC argued that growth would result from the development of this land, according to the essential argument of the “growth machine” thesis. The members of this LGC were actors with disparate interests, including powerful businesses outside of sports, as argued by Delaney and Eckstein (2007).

In August 2005, the City of Athens and the PAO football club signed a Memorandum of Cooperation, according to which the city would develop a twin urban regeneration plan to turn PAO’s old stadium at Alexandras Avenue into a park and provide for the construction of the football club’s new stadium in Eleonas. The major shareholder of PAO is a family that owns a shipping company, an oil refinery, and national news media organizations.

Prior to that Memorandum, the Mayor (a politician of the then-governing conservative New Democracy party) had devoted lengthy sessions to informing PAO’s stakeholders about the implementation of the urban regeneration plan. The city, in collaboration with Greece’s largest bank, would establish a special purpose company (SPC) with control over the construction of the stadium. The bank would be directly involved

because it owns a large land property (part of it would be allocated for the purpose of the project) and buildings in the area, and was interested in raising the value of its property through this urban renewal plan (Eleftherotypia, 2005).

Three months later, in November 2005, the city and the bank set up an SPC (named Twin Regeneration S.A.). The two parties contributed equally to the company’s assets and working capital and equally shared in the land ownership rights of approximately 50 acres for 99 years. The city’s plan was to construct the stadium and then lease it to PAO.

Six months later, during the second half of 2006, following consultations between the city and the Environment Ministry, this group of developers managed to secure the symbolic support of the central government for a “legal dressing” of the plan. In August 2006, a bill prepared by the Environment Ministry was passed by an overwhelming majority of Parliament (297/300 votes), becoming Law 3481/06, amending the current city planning regulations. Article 12 of the Law defines two large new building sites in Eleonas. The first site is basically commercial and is able to host shops, supermarkets, banks, insurance companies, utilities, government offices, restaurants, bars, parking spaces, and so on. While the Presidential Decree of 1995 allowed for a building factor of 0.1, Law 3481/06 law set the allowable factor to 0.8, with a provision that would double the factor to 1.6 on the explicit condition that the adjacent land owned by the artificial silk production company ETMA would be donated to the city. The second building site is devoted exclusively to the construction of a football stadium (DAWA, 2013).

Even before completion of the discussions between the city and PAO, large business groups began to seek properties in the area and prices rose sharply by approximately 20%. The most significant transaction took place during the same month (August 2006) that Law 3481/06 was passed. VOVOS, a large land development company, allegedly owned by a friend of PAO’s major shareholder (Matigarrida, 2012), purchased two large buildings (covering approximately 25 acres) from their owner, ETMA, and its subsidiary (which had moved to China in search of cheaper labor).

In October 2006, just a few days before the municipal elections that elected a new Mayor from the same New Democracy party, the city hastily signed an agreement with PAO stating that the project would now be carried out through an international tender. The investor to be selected through the tender would have to fund and execute the project and would be subsequently reimbursed by the city, with rent money to be collected from PAO.

In December 2006, a Joint Ministerial Decision (an administrative document) approved the master plan for the twin regeneration of Eleonas and Alexandras Avenue. Implementation of the project began in June 2007 with the signing of a new agreement between the SPC, PAO, and the city. This contract expressly provides, inter alia, that the stadium and its infrastructures be fully finished in the first half of 2008. Instead of the city, PAO was authorized to build on city property that the city had purchased from the bank and to select a construction company of its own choosing. The clause for an international tender was abandoned. In December 2007, VOVOS donated part of the property it had bought from the artificial silk production company (ETMA) to the city in exchange for the right to build its own shopping mall, applying the 1.6 instead of the 0.8 building factor as stipulated in Law 3481/06 (DAWA, 2013).

After this, the new Mayor publicized the benefits of the city’s latest contract to Athenians (see Figure 1). The Mayor claimed that the maximum benefits for the city and its residents arose from a number of revisions made to the original contract. Instead of the city, PAO was now to bear the full construction and maintenance costs of the stadium and parking spaces, all of which would become city property after 37 years. The city would avoid interest payments on the construction loan that it would have to obtain if it were to construct the stadium, and also avoid maintenance expenses. The city would also earn lease income from PAO throughout the agreed-upon period, and also earn income by selling the stadium’s naming rights. Finally, free of financial burdens, the city could reduce the commercial component of its building at Eleonas and build a new City Hall. The naming rights were eventually assigned to one of PAO’s shareholders and the head of a large foreign bank operating in Greece.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

City of Athens press release.

In the meantime, acting on its own behalf, PAO founded the subsidiary company GIPEL S.A. (from Gipedo (field) and Eleonas) to manage the construction of its stadium. The Chairman of the Board became PAO’s major shareholder. On July 24 2008, GIPEL’s Board decided to assign the building of the new stadium to AKTOR, a large public works construction company. The founder of this company happened to be the owner of a powerful publishing group with two newspapers providing national coverage, the owner of companies publishing magazines for various readerships, and the major shareholder in one of the largest TV stations in Greece. In April 2008, three months earlier, GIPEL and VOVOS had signed a private agreement of collaboration founded on “the unobstructed construction, completion and operation of VOVOS’ shopping mall” (PAO-GIPEL, 2012). Making use of its agreement with the city empowering the football club to sublease to any company of its own preference, PAO appointed VOVOS to build the parking spaces (DAWA, 2013).

The project began with demolition and excavation by VOVOS in order to build its shopping mall. The three components of the dominant ideology advanced by this LGC were: (1) the urgent need to build a modern stadium for a historic football club that bears the name of the city, giving the project the dimensions of a national goal similar to that of the 2004 Olympics; (2) the need to end the underdevelopment and environmental degradation of the area of Eleonas; and (3) service of the “public good” by generating economic benefits for the city.

The Athenian media with national coverage were in favor of the LGC for three main reasons. First, as already mentioned, local elite members of the coalition were owners of powerful print and digital media. Second, having secured the government’s support with symbolic resources, the coalition had the state-controlled TV stations on its side. Third, in the past three decades, governments have sought to influence the content of political coverage by granting licenses, often waiving fines for major TV channels, providing debt write-offs, offering loans and other concessions to publishers, appointing leading editorial personnel from large media groups to important public posts, and other actions (Papatheodorou and Machin, 2003).

While the coalition was proceeding according to plan (Athens City, 2008), it proved to be ineffective. Following a series of anti-coalition actions, a committee of local citizens opposing the plan presented an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court (Council of State). In December 2008, the Court issued an Order temporarily suspending the construction of VOVOS’ mall but giving the “green light” to the stadium. The Court’s final decision was reached in May 2009 and published on October 9, 2009, only five days after the national elections that removed the country’s governing party from office.

The LGC had begun to fail irrevocably and to break apart before the Court’s final ruling was published, although it continued to advance its “dominant” ideology. Without the mall, the entire project was doomed to fail.

The Court’s decision was immediately followed by a City Council meeting in which another civic alliance was announced to rescue the prospects of redevelopment. That alliance proceeded to a proclamation-complaint against the business interests believed to be behind the suspension of the commercial mall and the challenge to the Redevelopment Law, referring to them as

non-transparent and dark machinations of a sad minority, that actually serve speculative interests under the pretext of protecting the environment in deprived and densely populated areas of Athens (Aftodioikisi, 2012).

In mid-April 2009, a month before the Court’s final ruling, in an interview with a local radio station and less than a year later in a letter to GIPEL, a PAO shareholder with aspirations of becoming the football club’s major stakeholder argued that

the stadium was set on the wrong footing for years to also serve the purposes of the mall. The question is how to bring everyone before their responsibilities [to the football club] (DAWA, 2013).

In a press release in May 2009, VOVOS threatened:

[The company’s] management will claim losses for the demolition of industrial buildings and the value of its existing land plot, which exceed the amount of 280 million Euros not including the construction cost of the existing project, if the Joint Redevelopment project is cancelled (VOVOS, 2012).

Both the city and VOVOS reiterated that the construction of the stadium and the mall are two inseparable and socially beneficial projects, because the free land transfer from VOVOS to the city enabled both projects according to the law on the twin regeneration.

Two officials of the Athens Urban Planning Organization (AUPO) and an ex-president of SPC, in interviews in June 2012 for the purpose of the present paper, insisted that the project was beneficial and that the citizens’ reaction was incomprehensible.

In an interview with VOVOS’ chief executive officer (CEO) in June 2012, the CEO attributed the coalition’s failure to its inability to convince other economic interests in the area to collaborate with them and to the loose binding of the growth coalition itself:

The truth is that all sides [of the local growth coalition] did not have a common ground. For example, Panathinaikos wanted to get the best out of this project of twin regeneration while our company was wasting time and money. Even the amateur Panathinaikos, with its newly elected president, did not agree with the project to turn the Alexandras Avenue stadium into a metropolitan green park.

The preceding reactions, and especially the statement by the VOVOS CEO, show that even before the final Supreme Court decision was reached, the structural problems that rendered this LGC ineffective were to a small degree internal—the coalition was formed and operated solely on the basis of coincidental land development interests—but were most importantly external, due to the unexpected decision of the Supreme Court.

Counter-hegemonic moves: a ‘success’ story

Since the mid-1990s, citizens have engaged in important actions to protect open spaces in Athens. During preparations for the 2004 Olympics, such actions became more visible, questioning the transformation of local ecosystems into sports facilities for the commodified Games (Portaliou, 2006). In the period after the Olympics, this phenomenon intensified. The Citizens’ Committee to Save Eleonas (CCSE) was the most important among all those that mobilized to protect Eleonas along the lines set by the Presidential Decree of 1995, which prescribes that 40% of the area must be left as communal green space. The Committee was made up of intellectuals who were mostly new residents in the area, having located there after the 2004 Olympics, and were eager to protect the area that was meant to be the “lung” of Athens.

CCSE’s members did not resort to just organizing mobilizing activities; they also attempted to intervene at the institutional level, specifically by gathering knowledge and information on all projects and contracts that were previously launched in Eleonas. They read books on all contracts that transferred public wealth in a colonial way, either to large multinationals or to Greek shipping tycoons living abroad. This tracing of the details of the methods those interests used to set up “deals” with the Greek state represented a powerful weapon for the CCSE. Thus, the CCSE was able to prove that the studies to “develop” Eleonas were unsubstantiated, in fact representing “a cynical act of filling the area with concrete,” as voiced by a key CCSE member who added the following in an interview to a local media source (NewsTime, 2012) on October 1 2009:

These tactics caused… great fear to the other side. That explains their menace against us because we show an approach that can stop the scandalous ways in which the big capital operates in Greece.

CCSE absolutely and patiently fought the growth coalition’s dominant ideology, as suggested by both Delaney and Eckstein (2007). It unveiled the powerful economic interests behind the city’s economic rationalizations and the unfounded claims/threats from those with commercial interests, and finally brought them to the Supreme Court, which severely impeded their plans.

Countering the city’s views regarding the benefits of its second agreement with PAO, CCSE presented a detailed financial assessment of the agreement highlighting a financial burden to the city of over $132 million and argued that this burden was equivalent to a public subsidy extended to private interests. Responding to VOVOS’ threats of huge financial claims if the construction of its mall was blocked by the Court, CCSE revealed the huge discrepancy between real and claimed costs (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

CCSE press release (translated from the Greek original).

CCSE also ‘assisted’ the Court by scrutinizing valuable archived documents, as revealed by the same coalition member in his October 1 2009 interview with the local media (NewsTime, 2012):

… we investigated the issue of maintaining the green balance in the area, as mandated by Article 24 of the Constitution. … When a draft of the Presidential Decree of 1995 for Eleonas was under the Court’s review process, the Court had stated in a relevant correspondence with the Environment Ministry [which we filed with the Court] that, once demolished, these exact old buildings [the place of which would be taken by VOVOS’ mall] should be turned into communal green.

Finally, CCSE published its reaction to the media’s support for the LGC in a commentary on its official website (Eleonas, 2012) while awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling. The commentary, under the title “The deafening unanimity of the media is beginning to break down,” includes the following quotation:

… we are witnessing an unprecedented unanimity of most media, especially television, on the issue of VOVOS’ commercial centre in Eleonas. TV Channels were competing on the same story, the same video, while most media reproduced and fuelled attacks, lies and misinformation on the subject [against us], emanating mainly from the Mayor. … and … VOVOS. This climate… is beginning to change…

Sports stadia as “public goods” in the US and Greek judiciaries

As mentioned earlier, the ineffectiveness of coalitions in LGC-driven studies can be caused by external structural factors that have nothing to do with the internal structure of the LGC. In the Athens case, the critical external factor was undoubtedly the judicial decision that severely impeded the LGC’s goal. Why did the Greek Supreme Court rule against a development project? Does it traditionally oppose development projects? Was the decision motivated by political partisanship? Did the Court bow to public opinion? How does the Court’s philosophy compare with that of US courts?

We will begin to answer those questions with a brief account of the judicial experience in the US. The ability of courts to impede urban development projects based on new sports stadia involves many issues. One way would be to limit the power of sports leagues to demand new publicly funded sports facilities. Another way would be to limit the power of cities to use “eminent domain” powers for the construction of such facilities or to extend subsidies to sports teams.

There are many obstacles to achieving such objectives. According to Edelman (2008), for example, only two attempts have been made to obtain court-ordered entry into an existing professional sports league, and they have failed in their claims. In addition, the majority of the judiciary across the US views the construction of sports stadia as valid public projects that deserve municipal and state funding (Asselin, 2006). Fighting “eminent domain” powers usually meets stern opposition from the courts. Relatively recently, the infamous Kelo vs. New London US Supreme Court case gave eminent domain powers to local governments to condemn private property for essentially private development projects. In 2005, the Court ruled 5–4 in favor of a plan by the small city of New London, in the state of Connecticut, to demolish an existing residential neighborhood to construct a mixed-use commercial/residential “urban village” anchored by the large multinational pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer. One of the properties to be demolished was the home of Ms. Susette Kelo. The city claimed that the “urban village” would have a huge positive economic impact on the surrounding community, and the majority of justices on the Court embraced these claims (Lopez and Totah, 2007). Obviously, the Court was highly in favor of what could be termed a “fast growth” orientation. This Court decision created a gold mine for stadium development, the most important of which was the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium in Texas, for which the city of Arlington evicted residents of an existing neighborhood in the name of the “public good” (Mark, 2010; Sachs, 2009). In this specific case, the evicted residents fought against the City of Arlington at the Texas Court of Appeals, claiming that taking the land served the private interests of the team, but they lost that challenge (Birch, 2012).

Unlike the US, the Greek Supreme Court appears to be in favor of a “slow growth” approach. In the CCSE vs. City of Athens case, the Court fully disqualified the claims of the dominant group on the meaning of the “public good”.

Panathinaikos FC claimed that the suspension of VOVOS’ mall-building permit would result in the cancellation of the football team’s relocation and that this damage outweighed the harm to the applicants. The City of Athens claimed that the “public good” dictated the continuation of the mall’s construction operations; otherwise VOVOS intended to cancel its donation of land to the city, which would inevitably render the planned regeneration of the urban setting ineffective. Both claims were rejected on the grounds that the Court was not forbidding the city from building the new stadium (without the accompanying commercial mall).

In addition, the Court found no “public good” that required the urgent erection of the mall and ignored the Environment Minister’s letter of January 13 2009, which stated that these legal interventions had been introduced for the “public good”. Finally, the Court found no evidence of any negative consequences for the employment of workers, presented as a “public good” in a letter to the Court by the Minister of Finance, also on January 13 2009.

However, as the global financial crisis has severely affected Greece since 2009, the Court appears to now be taking a tolerant stance towards this stadium project and other development projects. Reconsidering a new form of the twin regeneration plan, the Court’s Fifth Chamber published its opinion No. 88/2013 in April 2013. The Chamber upheld the abolition of the primary multi-purpose center, allowed the building of VOVOS’ shopping center with the building factor reduced from 1.6 to 1.2, and prohibited all commercial use outside the area of the stadium (Capital.gr, 2013). Given that this “formula” is incompatible with CCSE’s original demands (the developers should apply only the 0.1 building factor set by the Presidential Decree of 1995), it would not be surprising to see the case again in one of the Court’s next Plenary Sessions.

The Court had articulated a clear philosophy on the construction of sports stadia for urban development until the first stages of the economic crisis. Its treatment of another Super League football team, AEK (Athletiki Enosis Konstantinoupoleos), was identical to that of PAO thus far. In October 2002, AEK announced a deal with the construction company J. & P. Avax to totally reconstruct its old stadium in New Philadelphia (another municipality in the Attica region), starting in late November, with completion in May 2004 prior to the Olympics (Hortatos, 2013). The project would include a hostel for sports delegations, museum, convention center, sports shop, fitness club, restaurants, department stores, etc. As finances were not mentioned, it was implicitly assumed that the construction company would run the commercial segment of the facility.

In June 2003, the old stadium was fully demolished. However, two months later, on August 20 2003, the Supreme Court ordered the cessation of all construction activities until November 5 – the date set for hearing the case against the project brought by the Municipality of New Philadelphia and a group of local individuals. The plaintiffs asked the Court to discontinue the project in the announced form, arguing that it violated the Constitution’s environment clause. Specifically, the facility modified the current city plan, allowing a higher building factor and new commercial land uses, and the expansion of facilities would take place on forested land.

In December 2003, Parliament passed the Olympic bill, including an amendment that purported to settle the AEK stadium issue. In May 2005, the judges of the Fifth Chamber of the Court ruled that the amendment was unconstitutional and contrary to European legislation. However, it referred the matter to the Court’s Plenary Session for a final judgment. Following some years of deliberations, Parliament again dealt with the issue in February 2012, while Greece was deep in the midst of the economic crisis. The new bill provides that when finished, the AEK stadium in New Philadelphia shall also accommodate commercial spaces. The bill had the support of MPs from all parties, except for the communist party KKE and the leftist party Syriza.

Political partisanship by the Court cannot be established. In both the PAO and AEK stadium projects, the major political parties openly declared their support for these projects by almost unanimously voting in Parliament in favor of the government’s initiative to pass specific bills including land use changes. One month after the publication of the Court’s temporary ruling ordering a cessation of all construction activities in Eleonas, the Court’s staff union issued an announcement that included the following eloquent statement:

On the occasion of this case there has occurred lately a deluge of insults, threats and derogatory statements against the Court and its members, by civil servants (some of whom are contestants in the case), as well as journalists. This behavior leads to an impairment of the constitutional judicial review and places the country outside the European legal culture… An administrative document [the building permit issued to VOVOS], which was adopted pursuant to a law [3481/06] passed with bipartisan consensus and which may have the support of a significant portion of public opinion, is not exempt from judicial review (Edil-Ste, 2012).

Finally, with respect to the possibility of public opinion influencing the Court, the VPRC (2009) poll was conducted shortly after the Court’s temporary Order. This poll showed that the Athenian public was not well informed about the city’s regeneration plan for Eleonas. The Total Information Index was approximately 36%, as less than two thirds of the interviewed respondents had heard about the plan and only half of these were actually informed about it. Table 1 shows some of the major results of the poll.

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Table 1.

Citizens’ attitudes towards the Twin Regeneration Project, 2009.

Question	Political identification or sports club affinity	Response (%)(N= 680)
		YES	NO	DK
Is construction of the new PAO stadium in Eleonas essential for improving living conditions in Athens?	ALL	71	20	9
	ND	81	12	7
	PASOK	77	19	4
	LEFT	69	23	8
	Olympiakos	70	23	7
	PAO	86	11	3
	AEK	79	17	4
Is construction of the Municipal–Commercial Center in Eleonas essential for improving living conditions in Athens?	ALL	42	44	14
	ND	52	34	14
	PASOK	52	44	4
	LEFT	28	63	9
	Olympiakos	43	48	9
	PAO	48	41	11
	AEK	44	43	13
Is construction of the Mall in Eleonas essential for improving living conditions in Athens?	ALL	36	52	12
	ND	50	39	11
	PASOK	40	52	8
	LEFT	17	72	11
	Olympiakos	33	57	10
	PAO	43	46	11
	AEK	46	44	10
Will construction of the Mall have serious impacts on the environment and small–medium local business?	ALL	57	27	16
	ND	49	35	16
	PASOK	52	29	19
	LEFT	76	15	9
	Olympiakos	62	27	11
	PAO	52	32	16
	AEK	58	33	9

Adapted from VPRC (2009). ND: New Democracy; PASOK: Major center-left party; LEFT: left parties. Olympiakos and AEK are PAO’s major footballing rivals. DK: don’t know/didn’t answer.

The residents expressed unequivocal support for the stadium but were skeptical about the commercial buildings. They voiced these views regardless of political or sports club affiliation. There was a strongly positive view (71%) that the new PAO stadium alone could improve living conditions in Athens. This positive view persisted even when considering the respondents’ political identity or sports club affinity. Community opinion was not positive towards building the remaining structures in the plan, with only 42% of all respondents expressing that the municipal–commercial center was necessary for the improvement of living conditions in Athens, and even fewer – 36% – expressing a positive view towards VOVOS’ mall. Looking at the respondents’ political identities, citizens with a left-leaning political ideology were more negative towards the construction of both the municipal center and the mall.

The Court’s ruling was seen as the correct decision by 50% of respondents and as incorrect by 31%. However, respondents expressed an overwhelming belief that the twin regeneration project served the needs of or the financial interests of those aiming to profit from it, and that construction of the new stadium should be financed solely by PAO FC.

Conclusions

Research agendas on the politics of urban development are dominated by Urban Regime Theory (URT) and the local growth coalition (LGC) thesis, and these two theories are not synonymous. URT requires the formation of local coalitions, but not every coalition is an urban regime. In LGCs, the material interdependence between political and economic elites is not strong enough to create urban regimes in the form of stable urban coalitions engaged in governance. While the current literature is inconclusive regarding the applicability of URT in European urban politics, the LGC thesis may find some productive use. European LGCs advocating for the construction of new sports stadia certainly operate in a different external structure than their counterparts in the US, but the tendency of globalization is towards a narrowing of those structural differences.

The LGC that initiated and promoted the plan to construct a new stadium for PAO in Athens was made up of strong local elites with private interests beyond the football club, and had support from the media. The stated aim of the LGC was to regenerate an “abandoned” and underdeveloped urban sector in northern Athens. Thus, this project did not play a marginal role in affecting urban growth through land development. The coalition’s goal was not to build PAO’s new stadium with public funds, as happens in the US. This difference is not so conceptually significant, as direct involvement of the City of Athens in one way or another could impact its citizens through other forms of “taxation” (e.g. loss of city services). Therefore, the local growth coalition concept appears to apply to a large extent in this case, although the theory’s main support originates from US case studies. Unlike the US, however, the non-cartel structure of professional football in Greece did not play any role in “forcing” the City to bow to the demands of PAO for a new stadium.

The Athenian LGC proved to be ineffective, mostly due to external causes. The private interests that joined the LGC did not have exactly the same motives for developing the Eleonas land. Although the coalition had support from the mainstream media, its dominant ideology of “local development” was obsolete, as emphasized by studies on the growth dimensions of new stadia (Coates, 2007; Wilbur, 2000). The Mayor’s communications indirectly called upon the public’s “community self-esteem” and “community collective conscience,” but these had no effect because citizens almost unanimously agreed that PAO’s new stadium (as a stadium only) should be constructed in Eleonas. The key structural factor that rendered the coalition ineffective was the Supreme Court, whose ruling can be interpreted as agreement with the need for local growth by constructing a new stadium for PAO, but also as a judgment that the excess benefits accruing to commercial interests via enhanced land “exchange values” are not worth the costs to the citizens in the form of forgone land “use values.”

Comparing the US and Greek judiciaries on private stadia construction projects, the US judicial culture favors a fast growth model and sees such projects as a “public good.” The Greek judicial culture favors a slower growth model that supports environmentally friendly projects which the citizens often demand, although the current economic crisis is beginning to tip the balance towards the US model.

Finally, the case studied here presents an interesting comparison of governments as external structures affecting the effectiveness of LGCs for the construction of private sports stadia in the US and Europe. In the US political culture, federal, state, and local governments appear inter alia to hold a similar positive view that the construction of new private stadia serves the “public good” and that their sports franchises deserve to operate outside antitrust laws and receive ample public financial support. In the UK culture, governments reserve the right to judge whether the construction of new private sports stadia serves the “public good,” as shown in the case of Everton FC. Somewhat similar to the US and in sharp contrast to the UK, in the Greek political culture, governments consider the construction of new sports stadia to be for the “public good” and are wholeheartedly supportive of LGCs with primarily symbolic resources. Naturally, the influence of political opportunities should not be overlooked.