Battersea Power Station sold

I wrote a few weeks ago about Battersea Power Station being open for visitors, and mentioned some of the plans for its future. Today it has been announced that the site has been sold for £400 million to an Irish developer.

It wasn’t difficult to see this coming, the previous Chinese developer had spent a fortune on the site, but work never really got started, despite having just been given the final planning permission. By all accounts though, they made a tidy profit, having originally bought the site for £10 million. Which is one of the problems, really. Whilst the building itself is hugely iconic, it’s the land surrounding it which has more profit potential, as there’s no listed status and complex conservation work to worry about. Indeed, as this sale has shown, the land value has increased so much that it has been profitable for the developer just to sit on the land and not do very much.

The new developer could press straight ahead with the existing plans that have been granted planning permission, but I imagine that they’d want to put their stamp on it, and will be re-submitting their own plans. All of which means more delays, more political wrangling, and meanwhile the poor old power station just stands there, slowly crumbling…

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