A theme park could transform Bedford – here’s what the town can learn from Orlando

Stewartby Brickworks could well become Universal’s answer to the Magic Kingdom – Alamy/Orlando Sentinel

It is the sort of story which makes you glance at the top of the page, to check that it isn’t April Fools’ Day. Late last year, a major American entertainment corporation announced its ambition to construct a colossal new theme park in a medium-sized market town, just north of Luton, just north-east of Milton Keynes. Here, in a parcel of land shaped by the A421 and the A6, close to Wixams Retirement Village and a Sainsburys distribution centre, would arise a gleaming technopolis; a wonderland of music and lights, rides and refreshments, vast food courts and thousands of happy visitors. Where exactly? Bedford.

Ha ha – good one.

Except that this was true: Universal Destinations and Experiences – that famed US creator of fun-lands and worlds of wonder, which has left its scream-if-you-wanna-go-faster imprint on Japan, China and Singapore, as well as in its own country – was apparently intending to expand its theme-park portfolio into Bedfordshire.

Now Universal is talking to the local population about its plans to revitalise the old Stewartby Brickworks – a 476-acre site, on the south-west side of the town, that was one of the planet’s largest such work-zones prior to its closure in 2008. A pair of consultation events are due to be held over the next week (today and on 16 April), while those who wish to engage online can do so via a website (universalukproject.co.uk) which asks how the project can be brought into existence in a way that will be of benefit to the town and area.

“We are beginning a period of public engagement in connection with the planning proposal for this potential project,” a Universal statement on the website explains. “We are particularly interested in understanding what is important to you when considering this potential plan, and how we might best celebrate the history and heritage of the area.”

It is perhaps easy, at this juncture, to make a few not-wholly-serious suggestions. Maybe Universal Bedford (name to be confirmed) could weave in traces of the lace-making at which the town excelled during the Middle Ages (and long after). Perhaps it could tip its hat to the wool trade; one of the area’s medieval lifebloods. And if you are going to build on the old brickworks, why not restore some of that aesthetic too – acknowledging the site’s once-giant chimneys, four of which were mooted for protected status after the 2008 closure, only to be demolished in 2021. With a few aliens and boy-wizards too, of course.

But Bedford is not looking for such self-amused comments. The Mayor of Bedford Borough, Tom Wootton, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, recently arguing that “a possible Universal Theme Park and Resort is transformational for our area. It represents a significant opportunity for job creation [and] tourism promotion, all with a benefit to local businesses.”

Universal, for its part, is just as serious. This is a significant proposition that, while still at the drawing-board stage (there is no planning permission at this point), could indeed prove transformative for one of Britain’s less-appreciated places.

There would certainly be more money sloshing around. Including its sites in the Far East, Universal’s theme-park division generates about US$7.5billion (£6bn) in income a year.

It is not as if there is no precedent. Ask the nearest child what the word “Orlando” means, and they will wax lyrical about fairytale castles and talking mice. Although only the fourth biggest dot on the map of the Sunshine State (behind Jacksonville, Miami and Tampa), the city at Florida’s heart is surely its most famous; a Xanadu with rollercoasters.

Orlando’s rise out of the Florida swamps

It was not always thus. As with the majority of large cities in the United States, you cannot dig much deeper into history than three centuries. But in Orlando’s case, the archaeological trench is far shallower. Once you have gone beyond the basic backstory – sporadic Spanish exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries; the forced removal of the indigenous Seminole population from much of the landmass in the 18th and 19th – little happened at the heart of the Florida peninsula until Orlando’s initial acorn, the village of Jernigan, was founded in 1843. From there, the development of a city was a slow process, stymied by the Great Freeze of 1894-95, which destroyed most of the area’s citrus groves, and only really kicking in once the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad arrived in 1926. Even then, war and the Great Depression intervened and, as late as the 1950s, Orlando’s prime purpose was to underpin the army and air force bases that had grown up on its periphery.

Orlando’s own Disney World has become one of Florida’s biggest tourist hotspots – Reuters

It was the dawn of the theme-park age which changed everything. In 1965, Walt Disney announced plans to build a vast physical incarnation of his cinematic world in Orlando – having chosen its inland location over more hurricane-prone Miami and Tampa. When it opened on October 1 1971, Walt Disney World was not a mould-breaker – Disney had already launched Disneyland in California in 1955 – but it helped to revolutionise life in Orlando. Similar entities would follow, either in the city, or on its edges – SeaWorld Orlando (in 1973) and Legoland Florida (in 2011), as well as Universal’s own weighty footprints in town, the twin titans of Universal Studios Florida (in 1990) and Universal Islands of Adventure (in 1999). The latter is now host to the phenomenally popular Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which was added in 2010. A third address in the city, Universal Epic Universe, has been delayed by the pandemic, but is set to open next year.

The scale of the success is there in the numbers. Orlando attracts around 75 million visitors every year, the vast majority of them heading to the amusement zones. Not least Disney World; now a sprawling complex of four distinct theme parks and two water parks – which pulls in 21 million of those tourists, of its own eternally gleaming accord.

A thrilling addition to Universal Bedford or pie-in-the-sky thinking?

Of course, Bedford would argue that it needs no such star-spangled leg-up. At least, not in terms of history. It was, after all, there on the map long before 1843. Its name is thought to be a combination of the Saxon chief Beda, and a point on the Great Ouse where those early Britons would cross the river. It was certainly around by 796, when King Offa (he of the Dyke) was (probably) buried in its soil. It was a frontier town in the Viking era, set on the border between Anglo-Saxon Mercia and the more easterly Danelaw area, where Norse rule held sway. Its medieval fortress was so early an arrival that, built in 919, it fell victim to Viking assault. A second version, constructed around 1100, proved a little more durable, but was also destroyed, in 1224. Some four centuries later, the Puritan writer John Bunyan was imprisoned in Bedford Gaol, and penned his keynote Pilgrim’s Progress in one of its cells. In short, Bedford needs no help on history.

Would all of this be wiped away by the screams of teenagers on drop-tower rides, and the smell of pricy doughnuts? No. Would the town be transformed by a theme park? Surely.

There are two precedents more pertinent than Orlando’s rise out of the Florida swamps. One is just down the M1, on the outskirts of Watford, where the Warner Bros Studio Tour has been another place of Harry Potter pilgrimage since 2012. Few would argue that an attraction that can pull in 6,000 paying customers a day has not been an enormous hit.

Another case study waits on the other side of the Channel; one with, perhaps, more relevance. The news that a multi-faced American conglomerate is considering bringing its flashy logo and quest for new revenue streams to a place of unreliable weather has made headlines before. Forty-ish years ago, it was Disney mulling over possible locations for a European theme park – ultimately, in 1992, eschewing the Mediterranean sunshine of Alicante for the rather rainier skies above Chessy, on the east side of Paris. What is now Disneyland Paris has proved its worth, but only after a two-year spell as “Euro Disney” where, amid various teething troubles, the park came reasonably close to being an expensive flop. Its ascent to its 21st-century status as Europe’s most-visited tourist destination (400 million visitors and counting) has provided proof to an initially stodgy pudding – but such success can never be guaranteed.

Will we, 32 years from now, be marvelling at the latest thrilling addition to Universal Bedford? Will this remarkable apparition really contain tributes to the area’s industrial past, or are such suggestions just corporate chatter to make sure that the correct boxes are ticked on the correct pages? Will Bedford have expanded into Florida’s favourite cousin; an array of water parks and neon-sign mega-hotels surrounding that original Saxon kernel? Or is this destined to be one of those only vaguely remembered pieces of pie-in-the-sky thinking that never makes it beyond conference-room conversations? At this point, the views of a Hogwarts alumnus who can see the future might be quite useful.

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