Tortured Battersea may have last laugh
Imagine you’re playing a word association game and someone says ‘Battersea’ (what? If you have sad friends, they might say it). What would you go for? Dogs home? Power station? Derelict??
Well, pretty soon it might become ‘£4 billion zero-carbon regeneration scheme’, if you’re allowed that many words in a word association game.
Site owners Real Estate Opportunities (REO) are proposing to totally renovate abandoned Battersea Power Station, one of the world’s biggest brick buildings and, at the moment, one of the worlds biggest wastes of space. But with £100 million earmarked by REO to bring the building back to full working order, generating electricity from renewable sources, and then converting it into flats, a hotel, shops, cafes and restaurants. One of London’s most famous icons could be transformed.
Domed to failure?
Up to 3,200 new homes are planned in total, expected to house 7,000 people, and two new London Underground stations are also on the cards. There are plans for a 300 metre-high chimney to reduce carbon emissions and an ‘eco-dome’ (sorry, not really sure what this is for, growing plants maybe?), along with an energy museum to highlight the power saving initiatives on the zero-carbon development.
But poor Battersea Power Station has been blighted by bad luck during the 25 years its been empty, with several owners and a number of schemes being proposed but never seeing the light of day. So will this time be different?
Application absenteeism
Rob Tincknell, managing director of Treasury Holdings, REO’s development management firm, is quoted in the Telegraph as saying:
“We don’t embark on projects that we can’t deliver. We are determined Londoners will not be disappointed and this area will be brought back to life in the most spectacular way. It will be a place to live, work and play.”
Sounds great but there’s just one teeny tiny issue… the planning application hasn’t even been submitted yet. I’ll believe it when I see it.
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