Greece Considers Demolishing Olympic Venues

What do you do if you find yourself the custodian of a number of permanent sports stadiums that cost hundreds of millions of euros to build and are now—many of them unused—generating hefty maintenance bills? If you’re Greece, the host of the 2004 Olympic Games, you tear them down. According to

Der Spiegel, that’s what the government is considering doing with buildings like the Helliniko Olympic Complex south of Athens, which includes venues for hockey, baseball, softball, and canoe and kayak slalom. Although, like all recent Olympics, and the upcoming Beijing Olympics, Greece’s Games were highly touted as “green,” several soccer venues are too expensive either for local clubs to use or for the government to maintain, and a rowing course that was built in a wetland is no longer usable due to environmental restrictions.