Our lack of affordable (or even sort-of affordable) housing has multiple causes and apparently no near-term solutions. Just figuring out how we got here isn’t easy either. Oldtimers tend to blame it on overdevelopment and the city’s slavish devotion to growth at any cost.

Here’s the unspoken maxim of all political actors: Find someone to blame, and make sure it’s not you. That’s why climate activists, Democrats and regular folk who are experiencing the suffocating heat of the Front Range have ganged up on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), the man said to be…

Whether as a hotelier, entrepreneur, real estate investor, historic preservationist, art maven or nationally renowned plaintiff’s attorney, Perry Sanders is always busy. His specialty: launching projects that seem impossibly difficult, persevering through problems that seem insoluble and suc…

Editor’s note: The following is not an endorsement by the Colorado Springs Business Journal of any candidate. The Business Journal doesn’t endorse candidates and the following column is solely the opinion of Mr. Hazlehurst. 

Remember the nascent days of Facebook? I was an early adopter, amused by Mark Zuckerberg’s appropriation of a treasured college memory. When I began my freshman year at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, I soon realized that I was ill-suited to life in an all-male college in a d…

The last 10 years have brought, in general, great success and growth for many businesses. The next 10 years may not be so easy. Recession is on the horizon and many, including me, have been looking into ways to make sure their businesses weather economic turmoil. Hopefully this article will give you some ideas on […]

Twenty years ago an unknown number popped up on my very new, very cool and then remarkable little device called a cellular phone. I answered — local numbers were always local, and spam calls weren’t a thing.

The great migration is usually seen in the United States as the flow of refugees from south of the border moves to safer havens. Given our contentious politics, we don’t pay much attention to internal migrants. States don’t erect walls and border checkpoints, so citizens, legal residents or …

Remember the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy? Orderly systems tend toward disorder. That may be true of political systems as well. As Steven Pinker wrote:

In the last  few years we’ve had the dubious pleasure of watching the Colorado Republican Party descend from power and relevance to outright madness. Remember U.S. Senators Cory Gardner, Hank Brown, Gordon Allott and Bill Armstrong? And how about Governors Bill Owens and John Love? They were…

Many decades ago, I went to both Colorado College and Wesleyan University. In those long-vanished times, neither were particularly snooty, expensive or selective (they admitted me). Sixty years after I failed to graduate, both have enormous endowments, highly selective admissions policies an…

These are strange days for businesses in the Pikes Peak region. Superficially, everything is calm and peaceful, the economy is strong and getting stronger by day, and the future is… well, bright.

Overwhelmed? So am I — this terrible war is on my mind every waking hour. Time for a break — and what could be better than raiding my overstuffed bookcases for local history books, many of which I inherited from my parents and grandparents? I’m a lousy librarian, with books shelved in no par…

In a day, we’ve gone back to the past. Forget our ongoing political whine-a-thons — Russian President Vladimir Putin and his nukes have eclipsed all of our petty quarrels.

In mid-February we jumped on a regional jet and headed for St. Petersburg, Florida, via Dallas. As all of us whom fate and finances command to fly economy, we were resigned to the epic discomforts of modern air travel — but a week in the sun had a certain allure. Several longtime friends had…

Recently, we were treated to an example of the extraordinary clout of the Old North End Neighborhood. Colorado Springs Utilities had the effrontery to remove several historic lamp posts along Wood Avenue on Oct. 21, hoping to replace them with modern lights and poles. According to the neighb…

As you may have noticed, we have lots of museums. We have history museums, art museums, motorcycle museums, mining museums, a rodeo museum, a Museum of World War II Aviation, dinosaur museums and, of course, our new Olympic & Paralympic Museum. They’re engaging, fun, economically benefic…

Colorado Springs is a lot of things. We have UCCS, Colorado College, Pikes Peak Community College and the Air Force Academy. We have a dozen or so historic neighborhoods, an historic commercial district (Old Colorado City), an exploding Downtown, amiable suburban developments dating from the…

So far, 2022 doesn’t disappoint — at least for a newspaper columnist. I should particularly thank city council for its inability to choose a seat-filler for District 3, as well as express my gratitude to Debbie Kelley at The Gazette for writing her piece on renaming Pikes Peak. 

Remember “Wide Open Spaces,” Susan Gibson’s wonderful song released by the Dixie Chicks in 1998? The opening lines still resonate.

New Year’s Eve! As time goes by, New Year’s is less an opportunity for all-out partying than it is a time for reflection, remembrance and honoring the past. 

Editor’s note: John Hazlehurst has run off to Mexico (we’re pretty sure he’s going to come back), so we’re re-running a slightly edited column first published in June of 2012.   

It had been a while since my wife Karen and I made a winter trip to Puerto Vallarta (thanks to the infernal virus), so we were excited to head south earlier this month for a week in the sun.

What should America be most famous for? We all have opinions, and I nominate one that celebrates our creativity, ingenuity, fun-loving spirit and our extraordinary business culture.

So here we are, perched happily in the catbird seat of American cities. We’re near or at the top of a formidable set of ‘Best of’ lists: best city to start a business, move to, live in, have fun in, grow with, raise kids and have a good life. We’re a good-sized city without many of the ills …

Our hyper-booming Downtown is a dream come true for Downtown businesses, developers and property owners. For adjacent neighborhoods, it’s sometimes a mixed bag. 

The older I get, the more change rattles me. What’s going on Downtown? What’s going on in the White House? What’s going on with hiring decisions? Is that a new tilt in the playing field? Am I going to hold forth about the good old days? You bet. 

Will the real estate bubble ever burst? Given the soaring cost of new construction, the national popularity of our fair city and region, and the strong local economy, it’s difficult to imagine any real change in the foreseeable future.

In the idyllic early 1950s, Downtown Colorado Springs was the center of everything. Platte and Colorado avenues ran east and west, while Nevada Avenue and Tejon Street ran north and south. Public schools were organized radially, with four junior high schools (West, East, North and South) fun…

How do you know when you’ve become a geezer? In common with many of my contemporaries, I did my best to avoid that melancholy fate. You’re only as old as you feel, right? Stay thin, fit and healthy, and you’re fine, right? Don’t let your hair fall out, work out every day and go out every night!

Ours is a time of cascading crises; so many, so numbing and so endless that after a while we just stop paying attention. With that in mind, let’s concentrate on something that’s lighthearted, fun, uplifting and begins with a party!

Here’s a question that many of us in Colorado Springs have pondered: Who the hell are we? Are we indeed the best place to live in the United States, our Olympic City of Sunshine at the foot of America’s Mountain?