Hyatt Hotels & Resorts is to open a five-star, 400-bedroom hotel on the Thames as part of the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, in south London. The whole project, which will have two hotels, is due for completion in 2008.
Hyatt has reached a "technical agreement", in advance of a full contract, with Parkview International, which owns the site.
Michael Gray of Hyatt International, who was general manager of London's Hyatt Carlton Tower until Hyatt's management contract there expired at the end of 2001, has been driving the project for Hyatt.
Currently the five-star, 319-bedroom Birmingham Hyatt is the company's only UK property, and Gray's task has been to secure a new London flagship.
Parkview says the hotel will compete with the Mandarin Oriental and the Berkeley. The 300 bedrooms and 100 "club suites" will have an average floor area of 40.5sq m, with views of the Thames, landscaped gardens and Battersea Park.
The Battersea site has been dogged by controversy since the mid-1980s, when the power station was decommissioned. Parkview acquired the site in 1993 and was granted outline planning permission by the London Borough of Wandsworth in 1996.
Parkview has struggled to keep fellow investors on board, however, and has fought an ongoing battle with protesters, who wanted low-cost housing and community facilities built on the site.
The protesters had their final day in the High Court last Thursday (9 October), when a judge threw out their attempt to have one of the detail planning consents reversed. The World Monuments Fund announced last month that the power station was to be declared one of the world's 100 most endangered sites. This, and the court action, may have prompted Parkview and Hyatt to announce their "technical agreement" in advance of a full contract being signed.
The development will also include a 725-bedroom conference and banqueting hotel, joined by a glass galleria to the retail areas in the old generating hall and the redeveloped Battersea Park railway station. Parkview said it was in discussion with a number of operators, including Hyatt, about this hotel.
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 16 - 22 October 2003