Portsmouth fans may be awe-struck by the grandiose plans of Alexandre Gaydamak, but it will be a father and son team from North London who will have the job of making his £600 million vision a reality.

Portsmouth’s partner in the scheme is Sellar Property Group, the privately owned firm founded and chaired by Irvine Sellar, 67, and run day to day by his son James, 34. The Sellars are best known as the developers of the Shard of Glass, a 1,000-foot skyscraper planned over London Bridge.

James Sellar has costed the new stadium at £72 million, equivalent to £2,000 per seat. Talks with banks for development finance are under way. However, large-scale house-building is a new venture for the Sellar group.

In addition to the 750 flats in and around Fratton Park, the scheme plans about 1,500 water-front flats, with some ready before the stadium opens in 2011 and most by 2013. The scheme will need significant investment in new roads, let alone the engineering job reclaiming land below the high-water mark.

The Sellars have a family history of turning their hands to different businesses and making a go of it. Irvine is a born-and-bred Londoner who has trading running through his veins. He left school at 15 and soon had a market stall selling gloves in Chelmsford, Essex. Before long he had a couple of menswear outlets and then opened up in Wardour Street, in London’s Soho, selling unisex clothes just as the Swinging Sixties got under way, morphing his business into the Mates chain.

By 1980, Sellar Sr ditched the rag trade for the property industry. He made and lost an estimated £750 million fortune by the time of the property crash in the early 1990s. With the Shard of Glass, father and son are back looking to reach for the skies. With Portsmouth and Gaydamak, James will be hoping to take Portsmouth to similar heights.