Luton Councillors tonight voted unanimously to grant detailed planning approval for a new 25,000-seat stadium for Luton Town Football Club at Power Court, paving the way for a sustainable financial future for the Hatters.
The football arena is the centrepiece of a larger redevelopment project designed to help regenerate the town centre on the Power Court site which has sat toxic and derelict in the heart of Luton for more than two decades.
Also approved were outline plans for an 1,800-capacity music venue, with further details still be approved, and the creation of a public plaza through the deculverting of the River Lea. The site will also have food and drink outlets, a hotel, commercial, retail and community spaces all creating jobs for local people.
Luton Town FC’s property arm, 2020 Developments, first unveiled new stadium plans in 2016, and they were credited, at the time, with generating a record number of responses for a UK planning application. But progress was slowed by significant objections to the since scrapped Newlands Park accompanying development by Capital and Regional, the former owner of The Mall shopping centre as it was then named, now the Luton Point, but forever known locally to many as The Arndale.
A High Court judge eventually threw out their judicial review application and the club achieved an historic outline planning application in 2019. But then the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit and increases in prices provided further obstacles for the Power Court project.
Originally, when stadium plans were first announced, in 2016, the club were in League Two and the proposals were for a 17,500-seat stadium with the room to grow up to 23,000. But since then the Hatters have gone on a historic football journey earning back-to-back promotions to the Championship and then, last year, becoming the first ever club to have gone from the non-league, in 2014, to the Premier League.
It was a feat they achieved in a decade or remarkable success on the pitch. And though the club was relegated back to the Championship earlier this year, the money from their debut season in the English top flight has boosted their coffers and allowed the club to redesign the stadium to a capacity of 25,000 seats.
Groundworks had already begun on the Power Court site, including the moving of an electricity sub station, to make way for construction which can begin in the new year and, once built, it is hoped that the club will play it’s first game at their new Power Court stadium home in 2027.
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