The study is due to be completed and the results announced by the end of July, MPs at the House communications and works committee were told. Under its contract with the government, Hermes has rights to the old airport until 2031.

In 2012 Hermes and a privately owned Chinese firm Far Eastern Phoenix (FEP) had concluded a deal for the area, set to yield a €600 million benefit for Cyprus.

The intended investment concerned developing the old airport into a large commercial showroom and bonded warehouses for Chinese goods as well as a small conference centre.

Under the deal FEP would assume the management of the airport for the remaining duration of the concession agreement between Cyprus and Hermes – 19 years.

The Chinese company had asked for a longer-term lease – 50 years. However, legal questions were raised over whether the state could offer the Chinese firm a further 31 years without a tender process.

The deal was further complicated when it emerged the wife of the then director of the president’s diplomatic office, Marios Ieronymides was a director of FEP when it made the airport proposal in 2012 though she had stepped down in March 2012, around the time the provisional agreement between the FEP and the government had been signed.

But by January 2013, the deal just fizzled out and was forgotten about in the ensuing financial meltdown in March that year.

Some MPs at Thursday’s session were pessimistic that investors would take on such a short-term prospect – 16 years –  even shorter than it was when FEP was in the picture.

“The first attempt was unsuccessful and experience has shown that there should be a serious study, a feasibility study and what commercial uses this place could have,” said DISY deputy Zacharias Zachariou.

AKEL MP Christakis Tziovani also said everyone remembers ‘the war’ over the old airport that happened last time and suggested a wiser and more targeted course of action be followed this time around.

“We have already delayed too long,” he added.

Source: Cyprus Mail