LONDON: Four years after its official opening, Battersea Power Station (BPS) has broken ground on its latest addition, Prospect Place South – the next phase of development for the 42-acre riverside neighbourhood.
Designed by world-renowned architectural practice, Gehry Partners, Prospect Place South will deliver 300 new homes, 65,000 sq ft of new commercial space, a 15,000 sq ft community hub and a bike hub.
The RM52bil master development of residential apartments, commercial offices, retail spaces, dining venues and entertainment halls is managed by a Malaysian consortium comprising S P Setia Bhd 
(40%), Sime Darby Property Bhd (40%), and the Employees Provident Fund (20%).
Battersea Power Station Development Co Ltd chief executive officer James Saunders told The Star that the established mixed-use destination is entering its next decade – with family flats, additional council housing and a revised masterplan for the last 16 acres of brownfield site still to be delivered.
“We have already done two Gehry buildings. This is the next in the sequence, which will probably take three years to deliver,” he said.
A positive response from buyers to this latest development matters. London’s for-sale market is not easy.
Saunders put the new Gehry product in a band of £1,300 to £1,600 per sq ft – below some of the more expensive stock already sold beside the power station itself – and tilted the mix toward three-bedroom flats.
Studios and one-beds, he said, signal professionals; three-beds signal families.
The building now on sale is the more family-weighted of the pair.
Together, they will add just under 300 private homes, plus shops, a community hub and a 600-space bike store.
Public statements name the blocks Rosewood House and Hayworth House and point to completion around 2030. They remain, the developer still likes to say, the only Gehry-designed homes in Britain.
A second site is moving in parallel: about 200 extra affordable homes (council papers put the figure at 203) in a separate building, funded by Wandsworth and the mayor of London and managed by the council.
Saunders was careful to separate that from the original planning obligation. That, he said, was already discharged with the first 386 affordable homes.
The new block is “beyond the official obligation” – done because the money is there, because the architecture can sit with the rest of the estate, and because the company still has “another 10 or 15 years of development activity” and wants the relationship with the borough and City Hall intact.
Add those homes to what is already occupied, and Saunders’s working total is about 2,700 apartments. That is not 2,700 people.
On a rough occupancy calculation, he offered “probably 5,000” living on the estate – the point being that this is meant to be a district with lights on, not a stack of empty investment boxes.
Earlier phases, he said, have a large owner-occupier base. Investors who do buy can put flats into the company’s own rental book, with lettings and maintenance, rather than a serviced-apartment hotel model.
Inside the restored power station, the story is different. Saunders called it a “very immature asset” – open since October 2022, not yet five years old.
The first proper asset-management cycle has begun: changing the mix of shops, restaurants and attractions so the building is tuned to London as it is now, not as it was when the leases were first signed.
Footfall is cited at about 13 million visits a year and is still rising; 15 million is the next internal milestone. Spend, he said, is growing with the numbers, which is the combination landlords want before they start swapping brands.
Retail is no longer confined to the turbine halls. Every residential phase has ground-floor shops.
“The London retail market is tricky,” Saunders said. “But we are definitely seeing good demand for the location.”
Getting there is easier than it was. The Northern line station opened in September 2021; journeys through it are estimated at roughly seven to eight million.
The Uber Boat pier at the power station is, the company says, the second busiest in London after Westminster.
Tourists are the unfinished piece. Saunders admitted there had been no comprehensive tourism strategy when he arrived. Internationally the silhouette is famous; the shops are not.
“I’ve certainly met a number of Americans who said they think the power station is still generating power.”
Interviewed after the hugely successful staging of celebrASIA held over three days in mid-September, Sanders said BPS welcomed more than 270,000 visitors to the neighbourhood during that period.
Held for the third year, celebrASIA is a vibrant cultural festival highlighting the rich heritage and culture of South-East Asia through exceptional food from world renowned chefs, an artisan market, live music, dance performances, and arts and craft sessions.
“The challenge for us is replicating this success on a consistent basis,” he said, noting that coaches and packaged tours still tend to stay north of the river.
“But the London Eye and Shakespeare’s Globe prove the South Bank can work.”
Saunders, himself from south of the Thames, said the job now is logistical as much as marketing: getting the township onto boat and bus itineraries that already move people from the Eye, and tell home markets that the neighbourhood now contains restaurants and a high street – not only a famous chimney postcard.
“This won’t happen overnight,” Saunders added. “We have 10 years of development work to do here.”
News coming out of London last week was also positive, as US tech giant Apple is set to open a new, state-of-the-art concert hall underneath its UK headquarters at BPS. The 600-capacity venue will host one-off shows by major recording artists and emerging bands, all of which will be filmed and broadcast live online.
