Kevin McCabe reveals why he is breaking career rule not to build in Scarborough with Brunswick development

Despite his company being called Scarborough Group International, McCabe made a promise to his wife Sandra that the firm would avoid projects in the town so it could remain a haven from his hectic business life.

However, McCabe has now made an exception to his strict rule for the redevelopment of the town’s Brunswick Shopping Centre. His group purchased the site in 2021 and is in the process of transforming it into a leisure-led destination anchored by a multi-screen cinema due to open next year.

Meeting The Yorkshire Post at another Scarborough Group development – the rapidly-expanding Thorpe Park business park on the outskirts of Leeds – McCabe reveals he was convinced to take on the project by Scarborough Borough Council’s then-chief executive Mike Greene.

“I never intended to develop in Scarborough, that is one thing I did promise my wife,” the 75-year-old explains. “When I was back at base at the weekend, I could play squash, go out with my mates and have a pint of beer. It is very civilised and something I still do to this day.

“My time in Scarborough was precious to me to switch off. I didn’t want to develop anything in Scarborough or else people would be pestering me all the time or asking my wife ‘What’s going on with so and so?’

“But with the Brunswick, the chief executive of Scarborough Council said we’ve got the funding from central Government to help us regenerate the town which has become rundown like many town centres. His wanting to work with us is the reason why I forgot to tell my wife about it! It was the persuasion of the chief executive that made me disobey my missus.”

It begs the question whether he has been forgiven by his wife yet. “Oh not at all, she hates it,” he smiles. “People ask her about it – she’s not best pleased.”

But he adds: “I broke the rule because the town does need experience to help regenerate it. It is not something some rich guy across the street with cash in his pocket can solve. It does need experts who have worked with Scarborough Group for so many years to come on board to get the best solution.”

The project is just one of many schemes Scarborough Group is currently involved in, with McCabe the firm’s founder and chairman while his sons, Simon and Scott, are the chief executive and group director respectively.

McCabe may now be an annual fixture on the Yorkshire Rich List but his upbringing was altogether more modest. He grew up in post-war Sheffield just yards away from Bramall Lane, the home of his beloved Sheffield United and a club he would later own.

After growing a global property development empire from scratch, in more recent years the central focus of Scarborough Group International has been on projects in the North of England such as Thorpe Park.

The site is home to more than 7,500 workers and the associated Springs retail park and leisure destination, with eventual ambitions to double the current size.

He says: “Thorpe Park is a great example of taking cognisance of the future. It was a big chunk of land that you could see the potential of once the M1 had been extended out here.

“It was farmers’ fields. There is a total 350 acres and it is a development I will never see the end of unless I live until 120. It is a fantastic project, it takes an awful lot of skill, drive and enthusiasm from the team.”

It is only 40 miles from Sheffield but the development is a representation of how far his life has travelled. McCabe, whose father was a painter and decorator and mother a school worker, recalls: “I had a great upbringing. The best way of describing it is bread and dripping, Friday night was a tin bath I was always last in because I was the youngest and an outside loo that served four families. It sounds nowadays like it must have been horrific but it was the reverse.

“It was freedom, it was trust, you could go out and play on the street. There weren’t the problems of today. My roots are still the same but my wings have flown a lot of distance.”

That journey began when McCabe left school at 16 and launched himself straight into working life. After trying half-a-day at a steelworks, McCabe immediately decided it wasn’t for him and walked to a nearby building site where he persuaded them to take him on. The foreman encouraged him to get a qualification and he ended up going to night school and training as a quantity surveyor.

He ended up working for Bovis and moved to Scotland where they were opening an office in Edinburgh. One of the schemes he worked on was as a project manager on a new office block in Aberdeen in a joint venture with a company called Teesland. “I learnt such a lot about leases and putting funding deals together.”

McCabe ended up working for Teesland but in 1976, set up his own business called County Properties. He borrowed £10,000 from the Bank of Scotland and began redeveloping commercial properties in places like Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

McCabe recalls: “If I took you to the streets now I could pinpoint buildings we bought. They were affordable and were renovations that we would then lease on commercial terms and pre-sell to funds and investors.”

Its growth led to the British Linen Bank, the commercial arm of the Bank of Scotland, taking a stake in the firm to help fund its rapid expansion.

McCabe says he didn’t feel at that point he had made it. “One of my odd virtues is I get on with it. I wasn’t thinking about personal wealth, I wasn’t really thinking about corporate wealth. What I couldn’t resist is doing deals.”

County was listed on the Stock Exchange just before 1980 and at the same time McCabe set up Scarborough Group as an associated firm so he wouldn’t be “beholden” to the listed company.

As the business grew, Scarborough Group took a 25 per cent stake in Teesland which eventually became a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Teesland was listed on the Stock Exchange in 2002 and its growth was part of international expansion which led to increasing projects in Europe and China as the world’s property market boomed.

In June 2007 weeks before the global financial crisis began to play out, McCabe pulled off a perfectly-timed deal – selling a major chunk of his property empire to an Australian firm called Valad for £865m.

“I realised this curve zooming up in terms of properties and values wouldn’t go on. We had to do something to protect the family and the business.”

The deal included a takeover of Teesland – which required McCabe to conduct a big move of his own. “They wanted Teesland private. I remember walking around Sydney Harbour at 6am to make this decision as to whether to go back to buy Teesland to take it private. I remember ringing the bank – we had floated Teesland in 2002 for £20m and I had to buy it back for £200m.

“What we had got left was big. But a lot of it went to Valad and they caught a big cold. One thing I never dreamt could happen was the big banks going bankrupt.”

While he came out on the right side of that deal, that was not the case several years later with a bitter battle for control over Sheffield United with co-owner Prince Abdullah. A court ultimately decided that McCabe would have to sell his 50 per cent shareholding in the club to the Prince for £5m at a point when the stake was independently valued at £52m.

He is now in the process of completing a book about his time as Sheffield United chairman called Mucky Boots, which is due to be published in September.

He has only been back to Bramall Lane once since then although does attend some of their away matches in London. But he says he now prefers to watch Scarborough Athletic rather than making the four-hour round trip to Sheffield.

"When you get to beyond 70, those journeys are more tedious and you don’t want to drive in the dark.”

Despite his disappointment about what transpired, McCabe says the situation is only a “small part” of his life. At 75, McCabe still very much plays an active part in his business and is due to travel to China next month to meet construction partners.

He says being the founder of the business makes the idea of retirement a complicated question.

“Even if you utter the words, ‘I’m retiring’, it is difficult to leave with a capital ‘L’. If Scarborough Group was listed and becomes therefore in the true public domain it is a different position.

“When it is family-owned and so much of what we have on has my footprints on, you have still got a value. Should I have retired at an earlier time? With the benefit of hindsight, maybe.

“The key to success is the ability to adapt to change. We musn’t be idle and think we are going to be on the crest of a wave. Equally, you mustn’t think the world is going to collapse. We get on with it and adapt.”