John Tilghman "Til" Hazel Jr. (October 29, 1930 – March 15, 2022) was an American attorney and real-estate developer in Northern Virginia who is credited with developing several portions of Fairfax County, Virginia, into major commercial and residential areas from the 1960s through the present. He was instrumental in the large-scale development of Tysons, Virginia (previously known as Tysons Corner), which became one of the country's first significant edge cities.[1]
In the 1960s and 1970s, as Fairfax County was rapidly transformed from a largely rural area to one suburban, Hazel became the public face and fulcrum on which the pro-development forces rested. In 1983, a Washington Post article offered up this characterization: "[Hazel] emerged as its [Fairfax County] most controversial figure as a judge, lieutenant in the Byrd organization, community booster, preeminent zoning lawyer and developer, and eventually, as near to the political kingmaker as Northern Virginia's diffuse power structure allows."[2]
Author Joel Garreau posits in his seminal book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier that Hazel "has done more to shape the Washington area than any man since Pierre L'Enfant."[3]