You are here: MCD Property > Press Releases > A Merry beginning to developing a careerMCD Press:Birmingham Post, Business Property ReviewA Merry beginning to developing a career Merry Hill shopping centre may not appear to be the most inspiring building in the Midlands, but for Steven Byrne, Chief Executive of MCD, its where it all started...James OBrien reports

In a city still scarred by the building a vision of the 1960s Steven Byrnes approach to property is a welcome one.
MCD is a privately owned company, not a developer, he explains. We are a regeneration developer which is about getting everybody to work together.
With the Jewellery Quarter clock chiming in the background, he enthuses regeneration is about creating a physical solution for an existing community.
If ever this fact is forgotten, rejection issues will arise, he says.
So where did all this begin?
Steven had plans to go to university to study economics and economic history but there was a sudden change of direction and instead he did a degree at Leicester Polytechnic in land management. That led him into surveying and development.
The reason for the change was down to one of my fathers friends at Stourbridge Rugby Club who asked if I would be interested in doing some summer work and I took him up on the invitation to work for a firm at Stourbridge.
I decided after three weeks that I quite enjoyed working in the property sector and that result was to change my career path, he said.
It was an interesting time as Round Oak Steel Works gave way to what was to become the site of the Merry Hill shopping centre.
A lot was happening at Brierley Hill with manufacturing being run down. I knew that economics can record what has happened. My study option had been economics and using an analytical approach based on economics I realised it was regeneration rather than straight property development that was attracting my interest.
Steven got a BSc (Hons) at De Montfort University at Leicester and became an associate of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. But he decided he wanted to test the ground in London and do regeneration and help tired communities.
As a lot of industry was run down, opportunities for regeneration started to come up and I got a job in London with a company called Weatherall Green and Smith in Chancery Lane, said Steven.
The company acted for numerous property funds and I was also well connected politically. Since those days its name has vanished through a series of mergers.
Steven wanted to get as much experience as he could and he understood that an essential requirement to make the grade in property development was a knowledge of how money and finance functioned in the sector.
I have always wanted to achieve and end goal, said Steven, and towards that target I was always prepared to carry the proverbial boxes into the meetings I was attending with these guys. For a 21-year-old they were exciting times.
Steven was still a surveyor bit an opportunity to improve his career options came when a client of Weatherall Green and Smith asked him if he would like to take up more property development work and make a commitment to become a full-time property developer.
As a surveyor you are doing bits and pieces so I said yes please to his offer. I found myself in the Lesser Group and I was with them from 1989 to 1991.
I knew I had taken the right decision. The group was financially literate. I was able to take forward what I had learned at Weatheralls. I was now with a company where funds played a big part and it was at the time when greater sophisticated financial techniques were coming through and banks were starting to get very interested.
Financial methods used in the corporate world were now beginning to find their way into the property sphere and Lessers was the ideal place for Steven to learn about the progression of funding operations moving from one industry to another.
They also talked about the value of money, good markets and bad markets. In some deals in the then buoyant market it was not unusual for a site to be bought on Monday and sold on Tuesday but 1990-1991 saw one f the worst downturns in the property industry, said Steven.
The philosophy had been to buy cheap and then sell when the market was high. When the market came down Steven saw how his company started to buy land.
He said: The property market sometimes turns its back on economic parameters. It is very hard in property not to follow the crowd and what these years of learning taught me was not to follow the crowd.
I was a keen young man trying to make my mark and I made suggestions in the office about what I thought we should buy.
A lot of the time it was done to execute a transaction and that was the wrong reason to do a development and accompanying investment projects. That was a great lesson for me in what I wanted to do in regeneration development.
In 1991 Steven joined Inner City Enterprises known as ICE plc a regeneration company. It was awarded work in Toxteth after Liverpools inner city riots. It was using institutional funds and had been encouraged in its work by Michael Heseltine, then the Environment Secretary, who persuaded senior fund managers to put modest sums into a pot to help the regeneration projects. This became a substantial equity pot.
ICE was also carrying out regeneration projects in Nottingham and Manchester.
Stevens career steadily moved forward with ICE and in 1996 he co-founded MCD Developments to carry out specialised regeneration projects. Recently MCD moved into new offices in Chamberlain Building, opposite the landmark Chamberlain Clock.
MCD Developments has revitalised the hub of the Jewellery Quarter, creating a new mixed-use scheme.
The 10,000 sq ft of offices on the top floor of Chamberlain Building is a testimony to the companys growing ambitions as it spreads its development wings across UK, building upon the lead role it has taken in the regeneration of Birmingham.
But MCD is a familiar name in other parts of the Country. It is Essex County Cricket Clubs preferred partner to regenerate its main cricket ground in a £70 million scheme and there are schemes in progress in Norwich and Bristol and MCD has a partnership with Bedford Borough Council for its Riverside Square Development.
Since MCD started and made its mark in Birmingham and the West Midlands with regeneration projects we have expanded on to the national stage,said Steven.
MCD has kept strong local links in Birmingham and is an advocate of the arts. It has sponsored the Jewellery Quarter Arts and Designer Craft Festival and it used the inaugural launch as a springboard for the start of a new Arts Foundation initiated for young sculptors. This will present an annual opportunity for up and coming talent to create a sculpture at one of MCDs nationwide schemes.
MCDs Birmingham developments have gravitated closer to the Jewellery Quarter.
Developments have been the multi-award winning King Edwards Wharf and then Islington Gates in Fleet Street which helped to turn the citys canal network into a fashionable new destination.
The companys latest scheme, Brindley House, looks set to continue this trend and marks a new phase in the Jewellery Quarters development regenerating the stretch of canal under Newhall Street and through to St Pauls Square, creating a major new gateway into the Jewellery Quarter from the convention area and Brindley Place.
Brindley House also assists in shaping the boundary of the Jewellery Quarter taking an existing eyesore which is currently one of the citys largest vacant office buildings and turning it into a landmark building visible from the major routes into the city centre.
A complex £37 million conversion to 246 prime residential luxury apartments, Brindley House is built on stilts over the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and incorporates the first car pool in the city.
Italian lighting designer, Piero De Marchis, has been commissioned to illuminate this new modern landmark.
Just off St Pauls, MCD Developments is actively preserving an important part of the history of this Georgian Square with Derwent Foundry £23 million mixed-use conversion of a former foundry fronting Mary Ann Street. The Grade II listed building has been lying derelict for years and will create 98 one and two bedroom apartments and 10,000 sq ft of commercial space.
Demonstrating the selling power of the Jewellery Quarter, both Brindley House and Derwent Foundry are three quarters sold, achieving £53 million worth of sales in the last six months comprising in excess of 300 apartments.
Steven believes that the companys success in this area is proof the Jewellery Quarter is a real gem in the residential property market, attracting a new wave of purchasers keen to co-exist amongst a rich tapestry of creative businesses and increasing amenities.
MCD was recently recognised in the International Green Apple Awards last year and was one of 550 nominations to win just 60 awards.
Run by the Green Organisation and supported by many professional bodies including the Environment Agency, the top awards were given to MCDs Brindley House and Derwent Foundry schemes in recognition of building projects that enhanced the built environment and protected their architectural heritage.
These awards are also a signal that Steven and his team have a belief that MCD should understand what the market requires.
We like to know what is working and not working in the market. The answers tell us about the markets need. If you get the right answer a market is created and then you are ahead of the game.
When that has been done once or twice we happily move into something else, another project. We do not like replication just to get volume. That is not proper property regeneration.
We listen to the people who are our buyers and we canvassed them before we started Islington Gate. We are very green and we interviewed about 90 potential customers.
They liked our brand and quality but the majority told us the entry level price was too high and suggestions came through to take of the price of car parking.
Now, the 144 units have come with ten car parking spaces. Just about everyone our competitors thought we were mad to do this but we were told one-to-one parking was a prerequisite, essential. We had to listen carefully.
Steven said: As Brindley House came up for regeneration, the policy at the time had been for high car parking ratios but we made a case to Birmingham planners telling them is was a city centre development and why couldnt the development come with a car club. A car club it was to be, the first in the West Midlands. Four cars are leased and the residents have so many hours of free use each month. One hundred people are sharing four cars.
The consultation process has become a vital cog in the MCD machinery and MCD was obliged to use it at Coventry on the former Butts College site, close to Coventry Railway Station.
MCD had landed the first government relocation, under the Lyons Report, to move some departments outside London.
The sire, nearly eight acres, had to have 78 per cent office accommodation and central to the move from London was the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
The community was supportive and they told us they wanted a construction to be of a high standard. Our brand is to create something to meet the ambitions of those living in the area.
A 650-seat theatre has been retained on the regenerated Butts College site and it plays its part as an auditorium, for the offices while retaining its character as a theatre for the community. The regeneration development also has 560 apartments.
MCD is a privately owned commercial enterprise and makes profits bit the Butts regeneration is a good example of what regeneration is about,said Steven.
He also praised Birminghams planning department and you can have a good debate with them.
Birmingham has made vast progress in the last decade and has improved its retail infrastructure but it needs to create more community infrastructure. Recent news about the redevelopment of New Street is very welcome, said Steven.