Joseph Thomas-Hazell just sits on his fortune.
He’s 82 years old and owns nearly half a city block near Interstate 25 and South Colorado Boulevard. He lives in the shadow of high-rise office buildings.
He owns enough land for another tower – or several new homes in a neighborhood where folks are ripping down tiny abodes to build mini-mansions.
He subsists on a fixed income but says he will never sell his property, despite a few offers that have come his way over the years: “This is where I was born, and this is where I want to die.”
If the land could be rezoned for multiple residences or an office tower, it could be worth $1 million or more. Thomas-Hazell’s father, a minister and electrician, bought the property in 1909.
“Of the 659 students in my (high school) class, there was one black kid, Joseph Thomas-Hazell,” wrote the late Rocky Mountain News columnist Gene Amole in 1998. “He never married. Joe told me he had been severely abused by his parents when he was a child.”
Today, Thomas-Hazell wears wrinkled clothes and has unruly white hair, reminiscent of Albert Einstein’s. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and speaks with professorial kindness and intelligence.
In his day, he studied at the University of Colorado and worked for General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y. He also designed instruments for university physics laboratories.
Thomas-Hazell’s parents left him the house when they died. He moved back in the early 1970s, after living in New York and Chicago. He worked a series of odd jobs, including a stint in the Denver planning department. He frequently testified as a concerned citizen in city hearings.
“He would always look a little disheveled,” recalls former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. “He’d seem a little eccentric. … People would not take him very seriously, even when he had good points.”
I met Joseph Thomas-Hazell on Tuesday at a hearing before the city’s Board of Adjustment and Zoning. His neighbors were there to complain about his mess.
Thomas-Hazell has two beater cars parked along the alley. His tiny brick house, built in 1897, is crumbling, with corrugated tin over some of its windows.
He has four rickety sheds. One, he built at age 13. Another contains a Model-T Ford his father gave him. Piled in the yard are building materials, rusting appliances, broken lawn mowers and old tires.
Much of this junk is covered with blue tarps or camouflaged by trees and bushes, so it’s not as unsightly as it sounds.
Thomas-Hazell is a tinkerer and said it’s all valuable to him. He fixes things when he can afford it: “I live within my means, and this bugs a lot of folks.”
His neighbors have been complaining for years. “We’ve got a pretty thick file on him,” said Charlie Brown, a city councilman. “It’s a sad story, but he has got to obey our laws.”
Some of Thomas-Hazell’s neighbors have offered to help. Others are fed up.
“We see what goes on,” neighbor Wood row Vaughn, 71, told the Board of Adjustment. “And most of the time, it’s piddle around, do nothing, collect junk, and it stays there forever.”
The board gave Thomas-Hazell 60 days to get his house in order. When I asked how he would do this, he deflected: “These people who are criticizing me should get a life.”
Thomas-Hazell dragged a yellow dolly to the hearing, stacked with bags, papers, books and keepsakes. He said he takes this mobile junk pile everywhere because people frequently break into his house.
He fears “they” watch him from the towers next door. He believes his phone is tapped. He suspects a plot to scare him off his valuable property. The police don’t take his complaints seriously.
“I’m not paranoid,” he insists. “These things are happening.”
Perhaps Thomas-Hazell has departed from reality. Or maybe reality has departed from him. He’s lived on his land as the madness of highways, office towers, strip centers and giant-screen movie theaters cropped up all around him.
“Some people, all they think of is money, money, money. Selling and buying, and never enjoying what they have. That’s what separates me from those people. I have what I want, and I want what I have. What’s wrong with that?”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820- 1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
