Luton Town once proposed a 70,000 seater replacement for Kenilworth Road, complete with Formula One track

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Luton Town were just a Championship side at the time, but that didn't stop their then-owners from dreaming big...

Luton Town Kenilworth Road Tom Lockyer scores Formula 1 race track
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Luton Town are set to play top-tier football at officially the smallest ground in Premier League history during the 2023/24 season, but 20 years ago the Hatters had grand plans to move from their iconic Kenilworth Road ground.

When John Gurney bought Luton Town in 2003, he had ambitious ideas to build a 70,000-seater, multi-sport stadium next to the M1, with a removable pitch on stilts, and a Formula One track around the site. 

Gurney also planned to rebrand the club London Luton and mooted the idea of merging with Wimbledon, shortly before the club made the move to Milton Keynes. 

An aerial picture taken on May 31, 2023 shows Luton Town's Kenilworth Road stadium, in Luton, as members of the ground staff remove the pitch lines and cover the grass during the end of season works. Luton's football team completed a fairytale journey to the Premier League after beating Coventry on penalties in the Championship playoff final at Wembley last week on May 27, 2023. Financial experts estimate promotion to world football's most watched league to be worth around £170 million ($210 million) for a club that have been through turmoil since they last played in the top flight 31 years ago. Luton are the first club to go from the fifth tier to the top flight in the Premier League era.

Luton's owners wanted to replace Kenilworth Road with a 70,000-seater stadium (Image credit: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

If that wasn’t enough, he also sacked popular manager Joe Kinnear, who’d led the Hatters back to the third tier, by letter. Luton fans threatened to boycott the club and avoid renewing season tickets in an attempt to force him out. 

“We knew John Gurney from his days at Bedford Rugby Club, which wasn’t a happy time for them,” BBC Three Counties' Luton commentator Simon Oxley tells FourFourTwo. “There were warning signs as soon as he walked through the door.”

Now, Kenilworth Road is going through huge renovation works, with their executive boxes running down one entire touchline now ripped out and replaced with facilities for the media and press, as Premier League rules require. 

Their first home game of the season, against Burnley due to be played on August 19, has had to be rescheduled due to the renovation work. 

While Gurney's plan for a new stadium never got off the ground, Luton Town are due to move stadiums in the near future, with work expected to begin on the Power Court ground by the end of the year.

Luton hope the new stadium will be complete by 2026, and the club have planning permission to build a 23,000-capacity ground - some 47,000 away from what Gurney wanted, but a whole lot more realistic. 

Luton Town New images show the Power Court stadium in its first phase of development at a capacity of 19,500, which will include around a third as safe-standing

What the new Power Court stadium is expected to look like (Image credit: 2020 Developments)

More Luton Town stories

In FourFourTwo's Season Preview, we take a look at how all 92 clubs in the top four tiers of English football will fare in the upcoming campaign - including how Luton's return to the top flight solely focuses on survival.

Former Hatters manager Mick Harford recalls the day the club were deducted 30 points when they were in League Two. 

Meanwhile, Luton could be about to sign the "best-ever" graduate from Arsenal's academy, in a move that would boost their chances of staying in the Premier League. 

Ryan Dabbs
Ryan Dabbs
Staff writer

Ryan is a staff writer for FourFourTwo, joining the team full-time in October 2022. He first joined Future in December 2020, working across FourFourTwo, Golf Monthly, Rugby World and Advnture's websites, before eventually earning himself a position with FourFourTwo permanently. After graduating from Cardiff University with a degree in Journalism and Communications, Ryan earned a NCTJ qualification to further develop as a writer while a Trainee News Writer at Future. 

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