News
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment