This is now our fourth update on the state of the renovation works at the Agora in Chania. The contract for renovation was originally signed in January 2022, with a deadline for completion of 24 months. With the remaining traders having left the site at the end of 2021, the contractors moved quickly to strip the building down to its bare shell, following which there was a hiatus. Nothing seemed to be happening and citizens began to suspect that the project would go the way of all public works in the city, with the work proceeding by fits and starts and subject to endless extensions of deadlines.

By the end of 2023, this was pretty much what had happened, with the delays due to three factors:
— the discovery of archaeological remains of the old city walls under the floor of the building, necessitating the intervention of the Culture ministry and the issue of new building permits.
— the fact that the existing steel roof trusses had proved unsuitable for repair so that a completely new steel roof had to be manufactured off-site, and
— a change of ownership at the contracting firm. The parent firm AKTOR was bought out by INTRAKAT, which thus became one of the largest construction groups in the country – something which has not proved a particularly good omen for the progress of the project.

Through all these vicissitudes the mayor of Chania Panagiotis Simandirakis preserved a manfully upbeat stance, maintaining that work was proceeding according to schedule, and by the end of 2023 it appeared that all these obstacles had been overcome, although by this time the deadline for completion had been extended to the summer of 2025. Work had indeed been proceeding, with the laying of new floors and the installation of new services such as fibre-optic cables, but the building remained roofless.

Despite assurances that work on the new roof was proceeding off-site, the first new steel trusses did not appear until July of 2024, and thereafter the project seemed to slow again to a snail’s pace. On a visit in January 2025 we found the roof still partially assembled, with some sections erected and tiled while elsewhere the new steel trusses had yet to be raised into position. We expressed doubts then that the project would be ready by the deadline of summer 2025, and three months on the roof is still not complete, while there has been no progress on the interior of the building. The situation has prompted a number of articles in the Haniotika Nea, bemoaning the negative effects of the delays on trade in the surrounding streets and casting doubt on the contractor’s willingness to prioritise the project, including the following. The deadline for completion, the paper says, has now been moved to the summer of 2026.

Economic disaster from the closure of the Municipal Market

Enormous financial damage is being done in the shopping streets around the Municipal Agora, as a result of the ongoing delays to the renovation of the city’s emblematic landmark, Haniotika Nea states after consulting two of the city’s main business organisations, which come under the umbrella of the Confederation of the Professionals, Industrialists and Traders of the Nomos of Chania (OEBENX).

The contractor’s responsibility
In a announcement made on 24th April, the Business Owners’ Association of the Municipal Agora of Chania, referring to its recent meetings with the Chania Municipal Council and local MPs Dora Bakogianni, Sevi Voloudaki and Antonis Markogiannakis, commented that “the conclusion of the meetings was that, although the problems of the past have been solved, funding is available, and essentially there are no debts towards the company, the contractor is delaying completion of the works.”

The Agora business owners believe that “the contractor does not have the project high on its list of priorities, for reasons which have not been made known.” They express the hope that “the pressures that the Municipal Authority and the local MPs have brought to bear will bring the result which Chania deserves. For we must not forget the monument’s historical value – the locality’s history is interwoven with that of this building, as well as the celebrations which took place on the Union of Crete with the Mother Greece. Nor should we forget that the Municipal Agora was and will be the most frequented point in the city for visitors from the rest of Crete.” They expect the “assistance of all the city’s organisations in ensuring the quick completion of this important work”.

Effects on the city centre
The president of the Association of Commercial and Touristic Business Owners of the Old City, Giannis Margaronis, spoke of a catastrophic three years for the city centre. The Association sees “great economic damage to the city and the streets around the Municipal Agora,” he told Haniotika Nea. “The situation is very difficult, with the turnover of the area’s business owners down 40 to 50 per cent following the closure of the Agora. The Agora brought people to the surrounding streets, more than 1 million visitors annually. Especially in Tsouderon street the situation is desperate.”

Mr Margaronis emphasised that “we have tried to preserve the character of the city’s historic commercial centre, so that it doesn’t become given over solely to restaurants and tourism, but businesses are having great difficulty in surviving. Some of them are closing.” Mr Margaronis thinks that the Municipality of Chania “could have reduced the municipal tax to zero for the five-year period, in compensation for the losses which businesses have incurred from the closure of the Municipal Agora, but they didn’t do so.”

Complaints from the Chamber of Commerce
The president of the Chania Chamber of Commerce and Industry Antonis Rokakis also stresses the need to finish the work. “As the Chania Chamber of Commerce, in close consultation with the 50 of our members who are immediately affected, we unfortunately observe that once again the demanding restoration of the historic Municipal Agora of Chania, which began in 2022 with public expenditure nearing a total of €20 million, it is not meeting the schedule for its completion,” he told Haniotika Nea. And he continued:

“For more than a century, the emblematic Agora of Crete, which was founded in 1911 and inaugurated by Eleftherios Venizelos two years later, constituted the commercial ‘lung’ of the capital of the Regional Unit of Chania – a well-loved reference point, not only for the consumers of Chania but for the thousands of visitors to our island.” For Mr Rokakis, “today it is encouraging that all the politicians, regional and productive forces of our locality, with a sense of unanimity and responsibility, are working in unison to create the maximum pressure … for the immediate completion of the works on our Corporate monument, so that once restored it can offer the required commercial, touristic and cultural added value which it should to the future of Chania.”
(Haniotika Nea, 25/04/25)