£7m plan may create heart of a community

WITH a little leap of the imagination, you can picture Arthur Scargill strutting down the corridors of Cavendish Court in Doncaster.

It was built in Georgian times as a home for the gentry, but is probably best known as the former northern base of the now defunct National Coal Board (NCB).

The NCB and union officials must have had plenty of heated discussions inside it, especially during the miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985. Now it’s the epitome of sleek tranquility.

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If entrepreneur Nadeem Shah has his way, Cavendish Court, which is already home to a vast array of small businesses, will soon be surrounded by restaurants and shops. His company, asset managers Vigo Group, is about to submit a planning application for a £7m scheme which could bring 500 jobs to a site which was once, to quote Mr Shah, “a bit of a dump”.

Mr Shah’s life story is screaming out for screenplay. He is the eldest of seven children who arrived in Britain from Pakistan with their parents when he was nine.

Mr Shah’s grandfather was director-general of land records in India for the British Government. His great uncle was an adviser to King George VI. Proud of his Doncaster connections, Mr Shah remembers watching a young Kevin Keegan, the future England soccer star, practising in a park when he walked to school. An entrepreneur to the core, he bought his first two houses when he was 16.

His life changed forever in October 2005, when an earthquake in the Kashmir killed 100.000 people and left four million homeless. His response was to establish the AHS Foundation, a charitable trust which has the remit of establishing a cottage hospital in the remote mountain village of Noon Bagla.

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Which brings us back to Doncaster. He believes his plans for Cavendish Court will help to take us back to a time when business really was at the heart of a community.

Sitting in Cavendish Court, which is home to a law firm and a company specialising in “green” energy, Mr Shah, aged 55, said: “We have a vision to turn Doncaster into a city, but visions don’t pay the bills. We need to make that vision a reality.

“I was brought up here in Doncaster and I feel a sense of ownership. If I see a bus stop damaged, it hurts me. If people feel connected to the community around them, they don’t riot. They won’t even drop rubbish in the street, because they are proud of their neighbourhood.”

Mr Shah, who is chairman of the Vigo Group, added: “When I was younger, you lived in a community which had shops with hardworking people running them. You saw the types of jobs you might want to do when you left school.

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“In today’s society, we live in housing estates and work on industrial estates and go on holidays abroad. We have lost a sense of community. We want to put apartments above the offices and turn this place into a real community hub.”

The National Coal Board moved out of Cavendish Court in the 1990s, and it soon went into decline. Mr Shah saw its potential when he bought it in 1999.

His son Tariq, who is a director of the Vigo Group, said: “We are almost out of space in here now. We are often used as the Doncaster hub for big businesses. The next stage is to take the site and the town into new territory.”

Tariq Shah said he believed Cavendish Court could emulate the success of Marylebone High Street in London, which benefited from the strategic vision of the Howard De Walden Estate, which is the largest landowner in the area.

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He said: “They took risks and actively targeted businesses that were good for the area. There are shops, restaurants and offices which have created a booming development. That’s what we have got to try and do here in Doncaster. On this site we want to have boutique, bespoke retailers.

“In the new development, we could have 40,000 sq ft of office space and two restaurants.

“Altogether, we could create up to 400 to 500 jobs.

“This used to be the site that nobody wanted. It’s now the most desirable site in Doncaster.”

HOME WHICH BECAME OFFICES

SOUTH Belmont in Doncaster, which was later known as The Lodge and then Cavendish Court, was built in 1813 by William Haigh, agent for Lord Fitzwilliam’s Irish estates. For some time the daughters of banker Leonard Walbanke Childers lived at the property.

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It was used by the National Coal Board for more than 40 years.

Cavendish Court was bought by entrepreneur Nadeem Shah in 1999. He turned it into high quality office accommodation. Proposals for the next phase of Cavendish Court’s development are expected to go before Doncaster Council’s planning committee in around four months.

A final decision is expected in early 2012.