ATHENS—Building a golf course in Greece is a byzantine process.
Much of Greece isn't covered by zoning laws, so forestry experts have to pore over military aerial photos to figure out what land might be acceptable to develop. Then, because land is typically held in small lots, it's sometimes necessary to buy up more than a thousand tracts.
After this, approval is needed from three sub-sections of Greece's culture ministry—the Classical, the Byzantine and the Modern—plus an additional one devoted to underwater relics.
Finally, Greece is not yet geared to develop mixed-use resorts—with golf, villas and hotels—of the kind that might attract wealthy tourists. One developer, Spyros Tzoannos, said he had to accumulate some 2,000 government signatures for a complex of resorts in the Peloponnese.
"There is a matrix of laws and a whole list of approvals that deter many investors," says Mr. Tzoannos, a director of Dolphin Capital Partners. "This maze does not only deter investors, but also overwhelms governmental employees as they, too, are often unsure of what needs to be done."
The hurdles to building a golf course in Greece speak to the country's broader economic problems and, in particular, how Athens hasn't been able to capitalize on the country's rich natural environment to earn some badly-needed money.
Like other southern European countries, Greece's sunny Mediterranean coastline is a perfect backdrop for golf courses, which bring in high-paying tourists. The demographics also are appealing to investors. With the retirement of the European baby boomers, there's likely to be more north-to-south migration.
Yet Greece has only six full-size courses, compared with nearby Spain, which has more than 300. Greece depends heavily on tourism, but so far its idyllic islands tend to attract young people looking for cheap drinks.
"We need jobs and we need investment," says Peter Doukas, president of the Hellenic Golf Federation. "It's an economic necessity."
Dolphin thinks it will start building its golf course in late 2011 or in 2012, seven years after the company was formed to move forward with this and other projects.
Some are hopeful that the country's financial crisis over the past year has made the government realize the need for industries that generate tax receipts.
"There will be three more in five years and another five in 10 years," says Mr. Doukas. "Tourists with higher incomes want to come, as they like the history in Greece, and more golf courses will attract them."
But the government declared itself in favor of more golf courses in the past, only for individual government departments and government officials to bog down the applications process for various projects.
A golf course in Greece costs between €10 million and €20 million ($13 million and $26 million) to develop, according to experts. They typically employ 40 to 50 people, including the staff of attached restaurants, but that figure could be as high as 800 if the course is part of a larger resort complex.
To build a golf course in Greece, the first hurdle is land. There is no land register in much of the country, making it hard to figure out who owns many tracts. There is no hard-set rule on what land can be developed; in general, virgin forest cannot, farmland can.
"It's difficult to come across large plots of land owned by a single person," says Leonidas Tsibouris, general manager of developer Temes S.A.
Temes opened Greece's sixth golf course, Costa Navarino, on the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, some 200 kilometers southwest of Athens, in May, after a long struggle. The developer had to buy more than than 1,300 properties in all to assemble the site, Mr. Tsibouris says. Other headaches included a lengthy environmental-impact assessment and the country's rules specifying ratios of building to land on golf course developments.
Temes was set up in 1997, after the owning family started buying land in the region in the 1980s, says Mr. Tsibouris. He says the company is on track to open two more courses in the near future.
But there can be a final hurdle to trip up a developer: The government permits they receive are subject to appeal. The Minoan Group has been trying to build a golf course on Crete since 1992, and a few years back got government approval. However, activists then took it to court, saying the development would damage the environment. The case has been in court for the past two-and-a-half years.
Write to Sebastian Moffett at sebastian.moffett@wsj.com
