Following tens of thousands of visitors to the new piazza at Battersea Power Station and the first wave of pioneering residents moving in, let's take a a brief look at the iconic site's history.
1928: Construction starts despite opposition by public figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury
1929: Construction begins on first phase, Station ‘A’
1953: Station ‘B’ comes into operation
1975: Station ‘A’ is shut down
1977: Battersea is pictured on the front of Pink Floyd's album Animals
1980: Station declared a heritage site by Secretary of State for Environment Michael Heseltine
1983: Station ceases electricity generation
1986: Plans for an indoor theme park are approved
1989: Theme park project halted due to funding problems and giant holes are left in the roof where machinery was removed
1993: Development company Parkview International buys outstanding debt of £70 million
2002: A development trust is set up to promote the conservation and redevelopment of the site and the trust achieves charitable status three years later
2003: Parkview gets full possession of the site and start on a £1.1bn project to restore the building and redevelop the 38-acre site into a retail, housing and leisure complex
2005: Parkview, English Heritage and Wandsworth Council declare the four chimneys structurally unsound and irreparable. Plans to knock them down are met with opposition
2006: Battersea Power Station and its surrounding land is bought by Irish company Real Estate Opportunities (REO) for £400m. REO drops Parkview’s existing plans
2007: The building is upgraded to Grade II listed
January 2009: Boris Johnson rejects plans at the site for a 1,000 ft tall eco-tower
August 2009: REO announces “material uncertainties” about the company’s ability to continue due to the financial crisis.
October 2009: REO and development manger Treasury Holdings submit new plans to redevelop Battersea Power Station
2010: Planning permission given for Northern Line extension to Battersea
February 2011: The £5.5bn plans, designed by Rafael Viñoly, and the biggest ever submitted in Central London gain planning permission.
November 2011: Lloyds and NAMA call in REO’s debt and it collapses into administration. A new buyer is sought for the site
2012: Battersea Power Station is put up for sale on the open market for the first time in history
June 2012: Malaysian developers SP Setia and Sime Darby enter into an agreement and complete the sale in September
2013: Work begins on redevelopment which includes restoration of the power station, the creation of a new riverside park and more than 800 homes of various sizes.
January 2013: Phase 1, called Circus West, commences and is due to be complete by the end of 2017 while the Northern line extension is expected to be complete by 2020
August 2014: Mike Brown, the former managing director of London Underground, announces a £500 million six-year contract was awarded to Ferrovial Agroman Laing O’Rourke to design and build the Northern line extension to Battersea with Mott MacDonald as design engineer
2015: Construction begins on Northern Line extension
September 2016: Technology giant Apple announces plans to create a London headquarters at Battersea Power Station.
December 2016: Nearly £13 million allocated to a new medical centre at Battersea Power Station
February 2017: new section of Thames riverside opened to the public for the first time since the thirties as part of the redevelopment
April 2017: ‘Helen’ begins her 3.2km tunnelling journey from Kennington to Battersea
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