A burnt-out arrivals hall is seen at the west terminal of the former airport. Photos: Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters

After languishing for more than a decade as a wasteland of crumbling terminals and rusting aeroplanes, Athens’ sprawling former airport complex is set for resurrection as a glitzy coastal resort.

The €7 billion plan to develop Hellenikon – a complex three times the size of Monaco – is one of Europe’s most ambitious real estate projects and stands to be a major boost for a nation limping back to growth after nearly going bankrupt.

To those with long memories, the site conjures up its 1960s jet-set heyday when shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis ran Olympic Airlines in lavish style and his partner at the time, opera diva Maria Callas, added a dash of glamour and gossip.

But those days are long gone and the project faces criticism now from the main leftist opposition and locals, both of whom fear the luxury development could turn into a concrete jungle out of reach for ordinary Greeks.

Efforts by successive governments in recent years to turn the 1,520 acre plot into a profitable venture have all fallen through, including plans in 2011 to build a financial district similar to London’s Canary Wharf with Qatari backing. The Gulf state pulled out of the project last year.

Lamda Development, controlled by Greece’s powerful Latsis family and leading a consortium of Chinese and Abu Dhabi-based companies, however, has big dreams for the area since signing a €915 million deal for a 99-year lease in March.

The group hopes to turn Hellenikon into a prime seaside resort with hotels, a kilometre-long beach, a marina and a park bigger than London’s Hyde Park.

“The airport closed on March 30, 2001. Thirteen years of complete abandonment have gone by since,” Lamda CEO Odysseas Athanassiou told a news conference, where he outlined plans to turn the site into an “international destination”.

“(Athens) will become the first European capital to, essentially, have a resort within the city,” he said.

For about six decades, Hellenikon was Athens’s only airport. Built in 1938, it was used by the Luftwaffe during the wartime German occupation and later by the United States Air Force. One of its terminals was designed by Eero Saarinen, one of the pioneers of the ‘neo-futurist’ style of the 1960s.

These days, the airport appears frozen in time, its once-busy terminals now littered with old boarding passes, debris from a collapsed roof and garbage. Announcement boards, somewhat eerily, still proclaim flights now long flown and forgotten.