Battersea Power Station opens doors to the public after decades since landmark closed
After four decades out of action, London’s iconic Battersea Power Station is opening to the public today, as owners of the Grade II listed landmark hope to cement it as one of the capital’s top retail and leisure destinations.
More than 60 shops and bars are opening today at the Art Deco development, including a flagship store for fashion retailer Zara. Other big names to open up shop at the riverside destination include Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, Mulberry and Uniqlo.
Bosses have also been quick to put down roots at the station, with tech giant Apple snagging 500,000 sq ft for some of its staff to move into early next year. US home appliance maker Shark Ninja has also taken up 25,000 sq ft inside the station as it looks to expand across Europe.
A new high street, named Electric Boulevard, is also set to open, as well as a lift experience in one of the iconic chimneys for views of the capital’s skyline.
The station’s two control rooms, which distributed electricity across London from the early 1930s, have been restored and transformed into an events space and a bar operated by Inception Group.
Project bosses said more than 2,500 new jobs were set to be created following the opening of the station today. In total, some 20,000 jobs will have been created through the 42-acre project, when it is completed.
The development has been long awaited, after ownership of the building has changed hands several times including a ditched blueprint to build a theme park on the site in the 1990s.
Two new London Underground stations – Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station – opened nearby last September.
Despite the speedy connections into central London, Battersea “will require more of a conscious decision to visit” than the capital’s shopping heartland the West End, one analyst told CityA.M.
While the power station development was comparable to recent developments like King’s Cross, “it will have to work a bit harder to attract high levels of footfall,” as it is not near a major transport hub, Wizz Selvey, retail specialist and trend forecaster, said.
At the crux of enticing Londoners and those from further afield to visit would be a roster of “flagship brands offering interesting experiences to make enough people decide to visit,” she added, pointing to Apple and other household retailers as huge footfall attractions.
Popularity for the retail destination had been building over the summer, with around 80,000 people visiting the Wandsworth location over the Jubilee long weekend, Simon Murphy, CEO of Battersea Power Station, told City PM earlier this year.
“We look forward to welcoming visitors from all over the UK and further afield from later this year,” he said.
The development also includes hundreds of homes, with prices for apartments in the Power Station starting at £865,000 in the Power Station.
A penthouse suite, known as a ‘sky villa’ – with views of the iconic ivory chimneys, as well as the City and Houses of Parliament – can fetch around £7m.
However, the local Wandsworth council has said it will not attend an opening festival event next week as the Labour administration criticised the scheme’s nine per cent rate of affordable housing.
“There are currently numerous live planning applications from Battersea Power Station that are still to be determined so it wouldn’t be right to accept this hospitality,” a council spokesperson told local press this week.
However, a spokesperson for the Battersea Power Station Development Company said the scheme had created “a new town centre for the borough of Wandsworth”.