The enormous revamp of Battersea Power Station is starting to take shape, after more than four years of construction and £9bn in costs. This fabulous development has now thrown open its doors to the first 100 residents, who are currently moving into luxury apartments on the site – and the next few years will see the iconic area transformed even further.
As well as luxury apartment blocks (where pop star Sting and survival guru Bear Grylls have both snapped up property), the site will eventually hold Apple’s brand new European HQ, a concert venue and a brand new tube station called Battersea Power Station, as well as shops, restaurants and parkland.
The former power plant itself the brand new home of Apple in Europe, with 1,400 staff set to move into five floors of the factory by 2021. Apple will be the largest office tenant at the site, with 500,000 sq ft of space, accounting for 40% of the total office space available in the whole development.
The bulk of the leisure space will be in Circus West Village, located just next to the power station itself. Circus West Village opens in summer of this year, and will be home to a multitude of independent retailers, including The CoffeeWorks Project, Flour Power City Bakery, Boom Cycle, Darwin and Wallace, and Paul Edmonds. There are still vacant spaces for retailers to snap up in this amazing location, which will surely be one of the capital’s retail hotspots when it opens to the public.
The site will also be a cultural hub, with a glass lift designed to take visitors to a viewing platform at the top of the power station’s famous chimneys, offering spectacular views across the River Thames. Speaking of those famous chimneys – they may look authentic, but they’ve been replaced with replicas. Two of them will have steam coming out of them, adding even further to the authenticity of the old power station.
The concert venue on site will hold more than 2,000 people, and the former control room of the entire power station will be carefully preserved and marketed as a new cultural venue for the public to visit.
Another exciting addition to the development is BASE – the Battersea Academy of Skills Excellence. This educational facility will work alongside local jobs programmes to build a talented local workforce for the Battersea development. The entire village, on completion, is set to create 17,000 jobs, and BASE intends to train and empower people to take up those roles, whether it’s in one of the many offices in the development, at a restaurant on the site, or as a maintenance manager working around the village.
Of course, green space hasn’t been forgotten either. A public park around the size of three and a half football pitches will connect many of the key areas of the development, and a riverside promenade will offer a beautiful space to stroll next to the Thames. The park will be used for events, as well as general public use, with decking areas, traditional park features and a definitive ‘London’ aesthetic.
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