LONDON — At first it was going to become the London equivalent of Disneyland, then a shopping center with a roof-top ice-skating rink and finally 3,400 luxury apartments. But each grandiose plan failed as one developer after another ran out of cash.

Now the decrepit Battersea Power Station stands as a sad reminder of the big ideas that flourished when credit was cheap and the economy was buoyant. On Monday, it goes on sale again.

A London landmark that was featured on the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album “Animals,” the power station has been without a roof for two decades. Its Italian marble hall and Art Deco turbine control room with parquet flooring are slowly rotting away.

Yet it sits in the middle of a vast 40-acre, or 16-hectare, plot right on the Thames, just opposite the fashionable district of Chelsea. Many developers agree it is an attractive proposition — if it were not for the giant brick shell that must be preserved.

“Battersea Power Station is an iconic world-class site that will attract great interest when put on the market,” Gerald Allison, senior director at DTZ, a property adviser, said. But, he added, it will have to make financial sense.

The power station was built in 1933 by Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed London’s red telephone boxes and the power station that now houses the Tate Modern museum, to show off Britain’s industrial power.

Battersea is Europe’s largest brick building and with its four white chimneys looks like an upside-down pool table. At the peak of its production in the 1950s, the station supplied a fifth of London’s electricity.

Since its closure in 1983, dozens of development plans have been drawn up, but none have succeeded. The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Cirque du Soleil circus group, Warner Bros. and even Michael Jackson were among those who considered investing in the project over the years, then decided against it.

The power station is going back on sale with an asking price of about £500 million, or $780 million, after Lloyds Banking Group and Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency, the government agency that manages bad property debt, called in their loans from the troubled Irish developer Real Estate Opportunities on Nov. 30.

R.E.O. bought the site at the height of the property boom in 2006, but when the recession hit and credit tightened, its plan to create a giant housing, leisure and retail complex collapsed.

Lloyds, which is partly owned now by the British government, and the N.A.M.A. are eager to get their money back. But some developers said that in the current economic climate they would be lucky to recoup just half.

The lenders and R.E.O. declined to comment. But Mr. Allison and others in the property sector see hope for the power station’s future.

Battersea, in the middle of a vast industrial area, suffers from a lack of residential infrastructure and public transport links, but that is expected to change. The British government recently approved a subway extension into the area, which could be built by 2020.

A new American embassy is due to be built in the neighborhood by 2017, and the property developer Berkeley Group has started laying the foundations for about 700 luxury homes and retail spaces just east of the power station.

Last month, a £262 million offer for the site by the Malaysian developer S P Setia was rejected as too small. But other foreign investors and sovereign wealth funds are said to be considering a bid. For example, Roman A. Abramovich, the Russian billionaire and owner of the Chelsea soccer club, is reportedly considering it as a location for a new stadium.

The government said it hoped the regeneration of the area would create 25,000 jobs, 16,000 new homes and £4.5 billion in tax revenue — a much needed boost for Britain’s stretched finances.

The biggest hurdle for previous owners was the expensive restoration of the power station, which is a listed landmark and must not be demolished. It was damaged by years of coal burning; some of the bricks need to be replaced, the foundations need reinforcing and there are doubts about the structural soundness of the four chimneys, which are 103 meters, or 338 feet, tall.