€6.5bn green light for Battersea plan
The mixed residential, retail, leisure and office venture will be born out of the redevelopment of the Battersea Power Station site. It will create 25,000 jobs — 15,000 of them within the power station building — and will include the construction of 16,000 homes in the city.
Part of the construction project will include a new Tube station on the Northern Line of the London Underground, which will be the first ever privately funded extension to the city’s underground rail network.
The project had already been given the go-ahead by Wandsworth Council, but was reliant on the final approval from the Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
It is envisaged that the first phase of development at Battersea will begin in 2012, covering residential properties and the project will take up to 13 years to complete.
Battersea has been the largest planning application ever lodged in London and emerged after REO originally bought the 38-acre site for €595m from the Victor Hwang-owned Oriental Properties in late 2006.
REO published its financial results for the 14 months to the end of February in June. It announced a pre-tax loss of £929m for the period — up from £399m (€485m) the previous year — and saw its total property portfolio valuation, across Ireland and Britain, fall by 43% to £1.09bn.
It recently announced that it had successfully restructured loan payment deadlines with various creditors relating to the Battersea asset, which is also set to be spun off from REO’s main portfolio of assets into a separately listed business.
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