Luton Town have released four new images of Power Court, plus their target date for completion, with chief executive Gary Sweet explaining how the designs for their new stadium will aim to replicate the “essential” elements of the Kenilworth Road atmosphere
More will be revealed when a detailed planning application is submitted this summer, but the Hatters are expecting spades in the ground at the turn of this year, being the starting point of a 24-30 month construction period, though infrastructure work is taking place now.
The club has also revealed that the stadium’s capacity will be initially increased by 2,000 seats from the 17,500 seats originally expected, with capacity for 4,000 more. Around a third of this stadium will be safe standing.
In a statement on the Hatters’ website, Sweet said: ‘We’re delighted the infrastructure element is underway allowing us to develop the detail of the stadium’s design and, in particular, work hard to capture the core characteristics that makes Kenilworth Road so atmospheric, so intimate and so special to us.
‘This season, perhaps more than any other, has demonstrated the incredible relationship we all have with The Kenny and that has been the driving force behind our design work.
‘We know everyone is desperate for the new stadium to open – as are we! It’s clearly a hugely complicated project but the main aim has always been to maintain the architectural quality and to deliver a stadium that replicates an essential, unique character we are all so familiar with but also fit and ready to grace the Premier League stage.’
The Club’s development arm, 2020 Developments, says it has released the new images and updates, ‘at a time when Kenilworth Road is being heavily scrutinised as a potential Premier League facility’.
If Luton beat Coventry in Saturday’s Championship play-off final they will become a Premier League club and that will mean they’ll need to upgrade their 118-year-old stadium to the tune of £10million over the summer, though chief executive Gary Sweet this week insisted that anyone that can’t embrace Kenilworth Road as Premier League ground doesn’t like football.
Earlier in the week, Sweet explained of Power Court progress: “We are just entering pre-app stage of a detailed application. Depending on our workload over the next three months this will hopefully happen over that time but with what is going on forgive me if it stretches to four, with everything else happening like develop this stadium.
“That is the timescale. We expect a decision on that by the end of the year. Within a few days or weeks from getting that decision we will start work.”
Sweet also revealed that if Town win promotion to the Premier League this weekend, that it will have little impact on the speed of developing Power Court.
“Promotion may not be able to accelerate it because it is now moving at a rapid pace anyway,” he said.
“We have had some deferment of the programme because of things like pandemics have happened as well as other things around the world.
“There has also got to be a huge substation that has to be moved. Work has gone into planning on that and work has started on that. That is the one thing. Unless that gets moved there is no stadium in that location.
“It was always going to get moved. It is being done and so there is a programme on that and the key element to when we can finish the stadium is effectively when they clear the site, switch on the new substation, we get rid of the old one and then nine months so that is the real milestone date in our mind.
“Will Premier League action accelerate it? Probably not but it will progress it more in terms of we will have all of our funding in place, number one, but also I think we will probably look at it with a little more ambition.
“There are two or three phases of the development. We will begin with 19,200 to start but if we have Premier League action we might skip a phase so that will be one impact.”
While outline Power Court planning permission was achieved in 2019, this latest application, once submitted, will provide more detail about the stadium as well as the surrounding 20-acre site, which will be regenerated from a decades old derelict site to a vibrant new leisure and entertainment quarter for the town centre.
Speaking of next steps, 2020 Developments’ Chief Operating Officer Michael Moran said: ‘The next phase now is an engagement with Luton Council and key stakeholders such as the Environment Agency and Historic England as we take them all through our detailed design process.
‘We are also engaging with contractors as we finalise certain construction features but our target for completion is 2026, regardless of the club’s league position.
‘We also mustn’t lose sight of the fact the stadium is to be accompanied by a whole new town quarter for Luton with 1,200 homes, leisure, restaurants, bars, retail and community space. It is incredibly exciting to be at the forefront of the borough’s wider regeneration plans.”
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