T his Friday, 39 years after it last produced electricity, Battersea Power Station reopens — not to power up London in its hour of need but as a gargantuan and glittering retail, leisure and residential complex, complete with six-acre public park, following a regeneration project that cost £2 million a day at its peak.

Seeing the first visitors enter the building “is going to be like watching your child get married”, says Sarah Banham, Battersea Power Station Development Company’s head of communities and sustainability. It is likely to draw a big crowd: 80,000 people visited over four days of activities around the grade II* listed building during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Inside are more than 100 shops and restaurants as well as 255 homes. Prices start

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