A former power station on the bank of the River Thames that was left derelict for decades is opening Friday after a 9 billion-pound ($10 billion) redevelopment to turn the south London site into a new attraction complete with shops, bars and hundreds of apartments.
The coal-fired Battersea Power Station supplied electricity to London from the 1930s to the 1970s, powering sites from Buckingham Palace to the Parliament building. The brick building — one of Europe’s largest and so vast that St. Paul’s Cathedral can fit inside its main boiler house, according to developers — famously featured alongside a flying pig on the cover of the Pink Floyd album “Animals.”
After the power station was decommissioned in 1983 the site was left as a sprawling, empty industrial site for decades, with various redevelopment proposals — including one to turn it into an indoor theme park — abandoned because of the enormous costs to repair and preserve the building, which was earmarked for protection as a heritage site.
A consortium of Malaysian investors bought the power station in 2012. The site now features a riverside park, a new London subway station, office complexes to house the new Apple London headquarters, and hundreds of glossy new apartments.
On Friday, the restored building, now housing dozens of shops, bars and restaurants within its turbine halls, opened to the public for the first time. The power station’s four chimneys were rebuilt to original specifications. One of them will house a new attraction that takes paying visitors up a glass elevator to the top of the chimney for panoramic views of the London skyline.
Developers say that some 25,000 people are expected to live and work on-site when the whole project is complete. They say the regeneration will provide 20,000 jobs and boost the local and national economy.
The power station project is part of a huge redevelopment of a stretch of southwest London, including Battersea and the area called Nine Elms, where the U.S. embassy moved to in 2018. The area was home to industrial wharves and depots but is now unrecognizable with dozens of high-rise luxury apartment buildings.
Critics say the plans exacerbate inequality in London because they don’t include enough affordable housing, and the high prices have pushed out most local residents in favour of wealthy international investors.