After a lavish but controversial renovation, he became famous Battersea Power Station London will reopen on Friday, for the first time in nearly 40 years, with a new lease of life.
Previously a coal-fired power plant that produced a fifth of London’s electricity, the building will now house hundreds of shops, bars and restaurants. The £9 billion (€10 billion) turnaround, backed by a group of Malaysian investors who bought the site for £400 million in 2012, will also make 25,000 people live and work in and around the massive building, which was a time saving energy for Buckingham Palace. and Parliament.
Since the decommissioning of the Battersea Power Plant in 1983, various projects intended to revitalize it have suffered many outages, including one that involved converting the building into a theme park, with a shopping mall suspended between chimneys. Now the old turbine halls have been converted into a commercial space that houses luxury brands, including Rolex and Mulberry.
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Apple is among the big companies renting space inside one of Europe’s largest brick buildings, which generated power for half a century starting in the 1930s. The iPhone maker will become the factory’s chief tenant and 1,400 employees will move into the new European headquarters, which will occupy six floors of the Boiler House, the boiler room in the center of the building, an area too large to accommodate St Paul’s Cathedral. The Boiler House will also host a dining room of over 2,000 square meters and is due to open next year. Celebrity chef brands Gordon Ramsay and Vivek Singh will also be present.
On the south bank of the Thames, a new area of about four thousand homes will also rise, which has drawn numerous criticisms of the lack of economic access.
“There was a fundamental compromise in the Battersea case,” said Anthony Brack, a senior analyst at Battersea. city center: Indulge in the luxury of maintaining and renovating the famous power plant, or save money by demolishing the building and using it to build affordable housing. “In the grand scheme of things, building this type of mid-rise housing allows many people to live together and access the advantages of London and contribute to the city’s economy,” Brack added. “This is how London should grow.”
Police said last week that Labor advisers would not attend the inauguration of the power plant on October 14. BBCBecause there is no social housing. For its part, the company claims that the grand reopening of the factory will create 20,000 new jobs and stimulate the local and national economy. It is estimated that each year in Wandsworth, the neighborhood the building controls, the power plant will generate £43 million in public spending locally.
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As the Battersea Power Station project includes an extension of the Underground’s Northern Line, it could also usher in a new model for financing London’s transport infrastructure. «It should be repeated over the next few decades, especially given that Transport in London “He is facing a huge funding crisis,” Barak said.
By Damien Shepherd and Irina Angel
© 2022, Bloomberg
(Translated by Sarah Reggiani)
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