Tag Archives: Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station Community Group refute owners claims of local support

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In a press release issued today the Battersea Power Station Community Group challenge the Power Station owners, REO/Treasury Holdings, claims of local support following consultation.

Be sure to register your views to Wandsworth Council before the February 1st deadline.

BPS Development Model


press release:

Re: Consultation

REO/ Treasury are claiming that 82% of people who responded to their latest consultation approve of the plans unveiled at the public exhibition on 3 days in December 3rd to 5th 2009

We feel that there should be better statistics behind this bald statement. The survey was self selecting through a simple questionnaire which literally asked to agree disagree or be unsure. There is no attempt to put the result in context of numbers of people responding.

On the 2 occasions we were at the exhibition there were few people attending. No notices to guide people to the exhibition and, apparently, inexperienced staff explaining the content of the models.

We fail to understand the purpose of this other than as PR during the period leading to the planning application when comments should be received at Wandsworth Council by February 1st 2010.

There is nothing on the exhibition to say that controversial plans to demolish the Grade II listed Water Pumping Station are applied for and that the demolition of the chimneys and rebuilding are proposed. I do know that the online petition on the subject of demolition of the iconic chimneys received over 600 votes to repair the chimney without demolition (PM web petition)

The questionnaire also asks the simple question to agree, disagree or not know if a tube line and station is supported.

Again, we know that the Minister for Transport Sadiq Kahn called the idea “humbug” and that there are no plans for the Government to financially support the tube line and that the Mayor of London has his own problems with a £5 billion deficit in the GLA transport budget so no money from there either.

See also YouTube “Battersea Power Station new plans” for the view of the exhibition and model

Contact Brian Barnes Chairman of Battersea Power Station Community Group

0207 627 5821

If you would like to object to these plans you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station-Privatising the river front

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BATTERSEA POWER STATION and Berkeley Homes are blocking the river access. REO, current owners of Battersea Power Station, are planning to do nothing on the site until after 2012 and not completing construction until 2020. That is their planned schedule, of course there could be delays and it could slip into the mid or late 20s. Meanwhile Londoners are excluded from using the river front.

REO like to claim they are concerned to benefit local people and Londoners in general but actually do nothing to back this up. A quick and relatively cheap benefit REO could implement NOW to demonstrate their good intentions would be to open up access to the river.

The Thames Path, part of the National Trail, is unique, it’s the only long distance path to follow a river for most of its length. It should be possible to walk the entire length of the River Thames through the city centre.

Thames Path (section 14)

Thames Path (section 14)

Currently the Thames Path on the south bank going east runs along the embankment of  Battersea Park, extends to a new pedestrian bridge that goes under Chelsea Bridge towards the Power Station.

New pedestrian footbridge under Chelsea Bridge looking east

There is then a short riverside path running in front of the new Berkeley Homes flats that ends in a gate saying: “Private Property: No public Access Beyond this point. Site access only” and “Danger Construction Site”

Is this really "private property"?

Is this really "private property"?

There is no obvious reason why Berkeley Homes should be able to privatise this river front access for their exclusive use. Is it legal? There is no sign of any construction work being done beyond these gates. It cannot be because the Power Station is unsafe as REO, current owners of the site, have recently agreed to build a marquee inside the roofless turbine hall between the four chimneys for lucrative income generating public events.

View of Berkeley Home's office from north bank

View of Berkeley Home's office from the north bank. Why is this blocking the "Thames Path"?

The path could easily extend east in front of the power station and connect with the Thames Path at Kirtling St and Tideway Walk.
The only real obstacle is the Cringle Street Refuse Transfer Station. However at other points on the Thames were there are such riverside waste transfer stations the path continues inside a protective cage. On REO’s own model (below) they showed the path going out onto a jetty over the river.  The grey jetty already exists only the white jetty extensions at either end are needed to make the Thames Path continuous and by pass the Refuse Transfer Station.

REO's model showing extended jetty running in front of Waste Transfer Station

REO's model showing extended jetty running in front of Waste Transfer Station

REO’s own plans shows a riverside footbridge going around the waste transfer plant. A small extension of the jetty ( in white) provides a path that bypasses the Waste transfer plant.

There is no reason the Thames Path could not be opened up NOW, cheaply and immediately. If you want to let REO know how you feel about them blocking the Thames Path you can fill in their questionnaire.

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

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If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

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If you would like to object to the planning applications for Battersea Power Station you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

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BLACK HELICOPTERS OVER BATTERSEA POWER STATION

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REO, current owners of Battersea Power Station, like all previous owners, have been reluctant to allow any local community use of the site. However they have clearly made parts of the site available to some hand picked users, such as private helicopter operators.

Private helicopter taking off from Battersea Power Station

Private helicopter taking off from Battersea Power Station

So while the principle of allowing use of the site is established there is no transparent decision making process for allowing community or public use of the site – it seems to be at the whim and gift of REO’s private patronage.

There does not seem to have been any consultation on the noisy informal heliport.  It would also appear that the helicopter is flying outside the compulsory Helicopter flight route over the Thames. If it is a single engined helicopter it should only be flying over the Thames in the London Control Zone. Helicopters taking off from Battersea Power Station fly south inland flying over residential areas.

Helicopter landing at Battersea Power Station

Helicopter landing at Battersea Power Station

If you are concerned about noise from helicopters you might be interested to read  In a Spin- A review of Helicopter Noise by London Assembly Environment Committee

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

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If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here to view more Battersea Power Station links

Spectacle Home Page

If you would like to object to the planning applications for Battersea Power Station you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

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Do you have any ideas for Battersea Power Station?

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Do you have ideas for how Battersea power station could be used NOW or in the FUTURE?

REO, the current owners of Battersea Power Station, make vague promises about community use and access to the site but all their plans are projected way into the future. REO’s schedule is “planning” until 2012 and building only set to finish in 2020- nearly 40 years after the power station was decommissioned.

Do you have any ideas for immediate use?

How about something for the kids like a giant adventure playground?
A river bus hub for river buses that acccept oyster cards?

The building is so huge, many times the size of its little and uglier sister the Tate Modern, it can probably accommodate all your ideas.

REO insist on only considering grandiose money making schemes on the site. They clearly plan to do nothing until 2012 and then only if they get their tube extension. This “all or nothing” approach flies in the face of current economic realities and other successful models of re-using industrial buildings based on either gradual and organic development or imaginative re-use of the spaces.

Do you have any ideas for how to use such a big building?

A museum of power technology; steam, water, wind, coal?
A Museum of the Thames? It could contain many boats, it has a river front. It has a great views from the chimneys.
An extension of the Science or Natural History Museums for all their bigger exhibits?
A Museum of Flight. Battersea has connections with aviation e.g.1900s Battersea Balloon Works.

Most of REO’s plans are for building around the site.Their ideas for the power station are banal, a conference centre (yawn), hotel and shopping (novel) and, would you believe, flats. If there was ever a building inappropriate for residential use it is Battersea Power Station. Their plans necessitate vandalising the magnificent brick facades by punching through windows in order to maximise income generating floor space. Light wells would be the more appropriate, architecturally sensitive but less profitable option.

Do you have any ideas that do not mean destroying the architectural value of the building?

REO make much of the “green spaces” ( the little bits between what they plan to build around the power station) but are less keen to make clear most are private spaces. Do you have ideas for the site that do not require surrounding and obscuring the Power Station with dense ugly office buildings?

Do you have any ideas how to use the current open spaces around the power station?

Doing nothing until 2020 demonstrates a bankruptcy of ideas by REO. If REO cannot think of, or at least allow, any uses that benefit Londoners and the local community then they are unsuitable custodians of a national treasure and should hand over the site to public ownership.

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

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If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

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There are no plans to build the Battersea Tube Station – Sadiq Khan MP, Minister of State for Transport

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Proposed Tube Plan

Proposed tube extension

Sadiq Khan MP, Minister of State for Transport, confirmed that there are no plans to build the Battersea tube extension and no public money from either the Mayor or the government for such a scheme- dashing the hopes for the Battersea Power Station development.

Owners of Battersea Power Station, REO (Real Estate Opportunities), claim their plans for the Power Station, currently out for public consultation, depends on the extension of the Northern Line to a new tube station at Battersea (near to Battersea Park rail Station.)  Khan’s unequivocal statement bangs the nail in the coffin of a public funded tube extension.

Besides the recently announced £4 billion short fall in Transport for London’s budget the Battersea tube project was never likely to happen for a number of reasons.

The site is well connected by buses and only a short walk to Vauxhall and one stop by train to Victoria. Nearby Queenstown Rd Station connects in minutes to Waterloo and Clapham Junction.

While Battersea has long wanted a tube station a bizarre two stop branch from Kennington is not the answer. As a cul-de-sac it will either be a shuttle service or will have to have two platforms (or the shunting infrastructure) for tube trains to “turn around”.  What is needed is an integrated transport scheme.

For a tiny fraction of the cost extra buses or even a tram line could improve the connections between Victoria, Vauxhall and Waterloo, all more useful transport nodes  than Kennington on the already over crowded Northern Line. Overhead rail infrastructure exists but there is simply not enough rolling stock. The Victoria to London Bridge service that goes via Battersea Park Station has a useless two trains an hour. More frequent  trains could make it a very useful line. A bus linking Clapham Common tube, via Chelsea Bridge, with Victoria, Pimlico and Westminster tube stations would go a long way to integrating transport of the area.

Finally even with REO’s dense and greedy plans for developments all around the power station there will simply not be enough people in the station’s catchment area to make it viable. The proposed US Embassy would be as near to Vauxhall so why bother going all that way to Battersea tube simply to arrive at Kennington?

REO claim they are going to pay for the tube and it will not need public money but with debts of £1.6 billion REO are hardly in a position to engage in tunnelling, one of the construction industry’s most expensive activities. They do not seem to even have the money to repair broken windows in the Power Station.

The reality is that REO have made a seriously bad investment, they bought the site for £400m at the height of the property market. The previous owner had bought it for £100m only a few years earlier. The only way REO can recoup their investment is to demolish the power station. Without the power station the site is one of Europe’s biggest and most valuable inner city brown field sites. REO insist the tube line extension is key to their development but it is just a red herring that simultaneously wins support from locals keen for transport improvements and plays for time. It adds to the delaying tactic of perpetual deferment while the building is allowed to rot and fall down.

REO’s plan far from benefiting Battersea condemns the area to years more planning blight, their pie-in-the-sky transport scheme will never happen and only distracts attention from intelligent, achievable improvements.

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

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If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here for more Battersea Power Station links

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If you would like to object to the planning applications you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station Original Plans

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Courtesy of Brian Barnes of the Battersea Power Station Community Group, what we have beneath are some of the original plans for the station, fuelling the debate on what the site should now be used for.

IMG_0214

IMG_0215

IMG_0216

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

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Wild Miracles

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BPS int girders

The bare bones of a tiny section of Battersea Power Station, 20 Oct 2009

“Nine Elms regeneration will strengthen capital’s role as greatest world city”, promises London Mayor Boris Johnson.  In a press release outlining housing, business and transport redevelopment schemes, the Mayor announced that “this vision represents the final piece of the jigsaw that completes the central area of London.  The regeneration of Vauxhall and Nine Elms now is hugely significant in allowing us to support the economic growth of the whole of the capital”.

The plans and policies for the site are detailed in the Vauxhall  and Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area Planning Framework. Copies can be downloaded from here

And if these upbeat statements from the Mayor were not enough, there is also news of a sensational, sensual theatre experience running from 23rd September 2010 to 23rd October 2010.

“The message of the project WILD MIRACLES is very sensational and unusual… The work shows how feminine sensuality can be lived and experienced in synergy with masculinity, and shows – through the stage plot – new possibilities to transform drama and fear into happiness and complete joy of life”.

Stage design mock-up

Stage design mock-up

“WILD MIRACLES utilises…an interactive stage design of light and video installations, giving the audience the impression of being involved in the act”.

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

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If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

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Battersea Power Station = Regenicide

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Relay sign still

Inside the BPS, 20 Oct 2009

A spiky piece sent to the Evening Standard by Conservation Architecture & Planning office Jack Warshaw caught our eye recently.  In the piece he denounces the redevelopment plans in Nine Elms and lambastes proposals for the new US Embassy.

“The projected new embassy’s security requirements…assume a “worst case” scenario of armed terrorist attack.  The resulting stockade mentality…  will contribute nothing towards making the area a more accessible, human-scaled place. Americans like me will be embarrassed by it.  Londoners will shake their fists at it.”

“The Power Station was doomed when Wandsworth Council failed to safeguard it from the collapse of John Broome’s scheme and English Heritage washed its hands of it… Regeneration? Don’t make me laugh… Just more examples of “regenicide”- killing off a place in the name of regenerating it.”

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here for more Battersea Power Station links

Spectacle Home Page

If you would like to object to these plans you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station – New Mini Documentary on-line

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BPS overview

A  mini-documentary exploring the ongoing Battersea Power Station battle is now live and on-line…  featuring powerful testimony from community group members,  politicians and  social representatives, this mini film touches upon the issues, thoughts and emotions surrounding the station and its precarious future.

Watch it here:  Battersea Power Station – The Story so far

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

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If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

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London 2012 Olympics Logo – Battersea Power Station

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Battersea Power Station Community Group urge you to take the chance to nominate Battersea Power Station landmark to be used as the design on a set of commemorative pin badges. We here at Spectacle thought about just how great an opportunity this is to raise awareness about Battersea Power Station and the current state it’s in.

You are able to submit one vote on the landmark of your choice, and so this is a very good chance to kick-start some action dealing with the Battersea Power Station problems!

The website can be found here

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here for more Battersea Power Station links

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