Luton Town announce River Lea has been opened up at Power Court
One of the first major milestones at Hatters’ new site is reached
Luton Town have announced that the rerouted River Lea running around the site of their new stadium at Power Court is now officially open.
After Hatters chief executive Gary Sweet revealed at the weekend that there would be some ‘major milestones’ regarding the ground on the horizon, then this is the first one at the venue which will see the club build a new 25,000 capacity ground with the aim of playing their first match at the beginning of the 2028-29 campaign.
A statement on the club’s official website over this latest announcement, said: “More than 300 metres of concrete tunnel have been installed to redirect the previously culverted river around the edge of the site, rather than through the middle of what will eventually be our new pitch.
"On Thursday, the original route, which serviced the huge cooling towers back in Power Court’s life as a power station up to 1969, was blocked off and the sandbags lifted to release the flow of water into its new channel. This brand-new section will eventually present a riverside leisure area for supporters and local residents to enjoy on matchdays and throughout the week, when the stadium opens in 2028.”
Meanwhile, discussing just what it means for the Hatters, 2020 Developments chief operating officer Michael Moran told BBC Three Counties Radio: “We’ve effectively stopped the old river, and water is now flowing down the new channel around the edge of the site. Many, many years of planning and work with the Environment Agency to get to this point. We’ve done a tonne of ground investigations, all these engineering works, and now the water is flowing down this new route.
“It's 20 acres, so effectively you're almost expanding Luton Town Centre by half, the site has got a huge industrial past, so the work to date has been the hard yards in the ground, but it’s nice to have something like this today where you can see a nicer touch to it with the new river route opened up.
"The river was one of the key impediments, but the other is a big UK Power Network sub-station, and by diverting the river we can then remove the shell of the sub-station, and that happens next week. Cables have gone and it’s all ready to go, then we’ve got a flat site ready to start piling later this year.”
Asked about the expectation from fans and what is next in store for Power Court, Moran continued: “There’s live drone footage 24/7 and I get it completely. Ultimately we want to work with supporters’ dreams and ambitions and that's why we've chosen the site that we did. It was never going to be easy Power Court, but we believe and I think the supporters believe that it was the right thing to do to put a stadium back in the heart of the town.
"So piling is the next key phase and we've got to go 20-plus metres in the ground with a couple of hundred piles to support the stadium super structure, so unfortunately it will be more below ground work over the course of the next probably six months. But around Easter, summer time, that's when the physical structure is going up and will start to be apparent.”