Luxury yachts are seen docked off the coast of Mykonos near Platys Gialos and Psarou beaches. The arrival of the super-rich to the Greek island brought their followers, but also attracted criminal elements, one businessperson noted. [Shutterstock]
While many Aegean islands are concerned about their future development and identity due to the pressure of the real estate market, overdevelopment and tourism, on Mykonos the zoning of tourist villages continues unabated. A few days ago, another potential investment was put out for consultation – this time at Agrari, with a hotel and villas. This is the fifth investment of its kind to be launched on the Island of the Winds in just a few years.
The plan submitted for consultation by Invest in Greece includes a hotel unit with 82 beds, 12 furnished villas, a spa, swimming pools and an indoor gym (15,781 sq.m. built on an area of 193 hectares). The company promoting the project, Southrock Property Company Eleven, is requesting that the project be included in the strategic investment plan in order to implement the investment as a Special Spatial Development Plan for Strategic Investments (ESHASE), an urban umbrella, and to obtain fast-track approval.
‘Strategic investments… should be directed to areas with little tourism development, such as the islands of the northern Aegean’
However, the public reception to the plan was not particularly warm. Almost all (68) of the comments submitted were negative, with residents pointing out that Agrari is one of the last unspoiled areas of a tourist-saturated island.
The overconcentration of strategic investment projects on Mykonos is not only a result of the island’s tourism success, but also, in a strange way, a consequence of the “effort” to curb the creation of new tourist facilities. A ban on the construction of new tourist units in the unplanned area of the island was imposed in 2021, except for those that are promoted as strategic (ESHASE) or with a similarly favorable urban planning status (special urban plans). “The building suspension imposed on the island, but excluding this type of tourism investment, has had this effect: Some of these investments have been switched to the strategic investment model (which is not particularly demanding in terms of the amount of investment required anyway) as a way of circumventing the suspension. It is of course absurd to consider an investment on Mykonos as ‘strategic,’” says Efi Sarantakou, assistant professor of spatial policy at the University of Western Attica.
“Strategic investments are not problematic in themselves, they are a tool used by many states to facilitate investments. But it should not be abused, and urban and financial incentives should not be given to overdeveloped tourist destinations. Instead, they should be directed to areas with little tourism development, such as the islands of the northern Aegean. Or in areas where there is a significant benefit to society, such as the complete regeneration of a touristically degraded area or abandoned settlement.”
