[4] Starting out with a fish and chip shop, Kassam made his fortune as a slum hotelier and in the 1980s was labelled a "merchant of misery".
[5] He bought run-down London hostels and hotels and was paid by local councils to fill them with homeless people and asylum seekers, until the tenants rebelled over the conditions in which they were being housed.
Kassam sold the football club in 2006,[2] but retained ownership of the stadium through his company Firoka with Oxford United (and later also London Welsh RFC) as tenants.
The site underwent a £50 million rebuilding programme and has been developed into a luxury hotel and spa with an 18-hole championship golf course and restored landscape gardens.
It was subject to agreement of the charity commission, which received 350 objections to the lease to develop a multi-use exhibition, leisure and entertainment complex.
On 5 October 2007 in the High Court, Mr Justice Sullivan granted an application by a member of the conservationist Save Ally Pally group to quash the Charity Commission's Order authorizing the lease.