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Unveiled: the 'last chance' for Battersea Power Station
Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor04.06.09
Developers today launched what they say is a final attempt to save Battersea Power Station.
They will start the latest round of public consultation - after a succession of proposals failed - before making London's biggest non-Olympic planning application in July.
The new scheme aims to restore the Grade II-listed structure and make it the centrepiece of a £4billion riverside development. Site owner Treasury Holdings warns that if the plan is thrown out, the 76-year-old power station is almost certainly doomed.
Treasury Holdings has put forward a low-rise version of a previous plan that included a 250-metre glass tower. That was blocked by Mayor Boris Johnson amid fears it would ruin London's protected skyline. Before that, a 300-metre tower had already been rejected.
Mr Johnson has seen the latest plan, which has no building higher than 67 metres and would not be visible from behind the Palace of Westminster, a requirement of the GLA.
The rethink means the Irish-backed developers are unable to make the project carbon-neutral - the tower would have acted as a huge chimney, sucking breezes through buildings encased in a glass dome so there would be no need for air conditioning.
Uruguayan architect Rafael Vinoly's replacement design sees the power station's interior turned into 650,000 square feet of offices and a 2,000-seat conference centre with apartments built on the roof. Curving blocks of buildings inspired by London's Nash terraces will provide further office, retail, residential and hotel space as well as amenities such as a hospital.
The plan also includes a 1.75-mile extension of the Northern line from Kennington to a Battersea Power Station stop at a cost of £460million. Rob Tincknell, managing director of Treasury Holdings, which bought the power station two years ago, said £20million had already been spent on preparing the planning bid and shoring up the crumbling brick structure.
He hopes the chimneys, thought to have been beyond repair, may be saved. The previous plan saw them being replaced by replicas. He said: "If this scheme does not make it, there is no power station. If you look back in history there has been disaster after disaster, rubbish scheme after rubbish scheme. We have designed, consulted and are about to put in a planning application. The project is in the hands of developers who know what they are doing."
Construction is planned for 2011 and would be completed by 2020.
Reader views (8)
i was born in battersea i would be devastated if the power station was taken down it has a lot of history and memories for when i was a child also it would affect flights to heathrow as they guide in over the station to heathrow.
- Kevin Pike, cheam surrey
My visit, when it was briefly open to the public a couple of years ago still haunts me. it was magnificent inside, eerily quiet like a cathedral, the only sound being that of cameras.
- Martin H. Watson, Teddington
why doesn't the LDA use its billions simply to cumpulsory purchase the site and give it back to the people as a series of parks and cultural uses. I imagine that if this is built it will become another souless mixed use scheme that gets nothing particularly right and will end up blocking views of this listed building from all sides.
- Ag, London Village
Wow looks nice!
- Dirk Diggler, Soho, London
Another hideously overcrowded plan, designed to squeeze the most in. A greedy overdevelopment with that gives nothing to the area. Where are the views of the power station? Gone, buried behind boring blocks of flats that no-one wants or needs. It is impossible to see BATTERSEA power station from BATTERSEA! Awful, awful, awful. Give us some open parkland, unite the power station with the area that gives it its name and unite it along the river with the famous Battersea Park. There's no parkland in here - take away the green roofs and you will see that on the ground there is precious little left. Yet another wasted opportunity. Pure pie in the sky. Mind you, it will probably never get built because there simply isn't the demand there for this sort of accommodation or development.
- Trevor, London
From what I can see from the pictures, this looks gorgeous. I actually quite liked the eco-tower and it was a shame to see it go. But this reworking is promising.
- M@, London
Looks a better plan as long as the promised parkland, galleries and other niceties are actually implemented. Unfortunately developers are not very good at fulfilling their full contractual obligations.
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
I am glad they have got rid of that hideous tower block that would have damaged London's skyline forever. I don't mind if the rest of it goes ahead whatever it is, I'm just happy that Boris has protected the historical view of London once again.
- Frank, London
