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Another chapter in the long tale of Battersea Power Station is set to be written should yet another redevelopment plan of the historic site be approved when put forward for planning permission towards the end of the year.
Real Estate Opportunities, 67% owned by Irish developer and investor Treasury Holdings, bought the power station in December 2006 for £400 million and plans to spend in excess of £4 billion redeveloping the site into a mixed-use scheme of flats, hotels, shops, cafes and restaurants. Designs by Uraguyan architect Rafael Vinoly show blue prints encompassing 3m sq ft of flats, 2.5m sq ft of offices, 1m sq ft of hotels and services flats, 900,000 sq ft of Covent Garden-style retailing and 500,000 sq ft of leisure and cultural space.
Since Battersea Power Station ended final production in 1983, several companies have bought the site and a variety of uses have been put forward (notably another mixed-use scheme proposed by Parkview International after acquiring the freehold in 1996) however nothing has ever come to fruition.
Fortunately, many areas which other schemes have ignored have been addressed in these new plans; the need for a tube station, environmental fears (current plans aim for the scheme to be ‘zero-carbon’), replacement of the irreparable chimney towers (to keep community groups and listed building inspectors happy rather than anything else, I suspect) and the fact that affordable housing commitments will have to be reduced if the scheme is to be financially viable have all been investigated, so its with fingers crossed that I await results of yet another Battersea Power Station planning application.
I have great hopes for this site, targeted to open to the public by 2014, and comments about the UK retail market being in decline thankfully don’t apply here; Property Week estimates around 4,000 residents and 25,000 employees alone will be in the area daily, and I suspect a successful redevelopment (with good transport links) will also mean an awful lot of interested tourists spending their hard earned cash in the retail sector of the scheme for many years subsequent to the launch!
SnapShop would also like to remind readers that parent company, FSP, are one of the leading names in Retail Business Information and Consultancy and can provide a variety of services to owners and prospective retail tenants of such sites. For more information about FSP’s Market Potential and Tenant Mix Recommendations services please visit http://www.fspretail.co.uk or comment as such below. Author: Lorraine Shingler
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