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When Jim Talbot was in the early stages of developing Wolf Point subdivision in Walker, he was warned by people who knew the Livingston Parish market that he would never be able to compete against the extensive real estate empire controlled by H. Allen Thomason Sr.

“I was told several times that I was in over my head if I tried to break into Livingston Parish,” says Talbot now, 15 years later. “I was told they control the parish, they own the parish, they get all the listings and they won’t show your houses.”

Turns out, the naysayers were right. Talbot’s development of $200,000 homes basically sat on the market for months, while houses in less expensive subdivisions built and sold by Thomason’s operation moved fast. About the time things started looking really dire for Talbot, Thomason made him an offer many panicky developers would have jumped on.

“He offered to buy the remaining lots in Wolf Point,” says Talbot, who was tempted, but not tempted enough. “He was only offering me pennies on the dollar—maybe 30% of what I thought they were worth.”

Talbot refused Thomason’s offer three times and held on to Wolf Point, which is located off Pendarvis Lane, just northwest of the Walker exit from Interstate 12. Eventually, it started moving, and today he considers the project a success. But if he had to do it over again, he’d save himself the stress and heartache of developing in a market that was dominated by Thomason.

“He just made it so much harder,” Talbot says. “But hey, that’s the way Donald Trump and all those real estate moguls make money. It’s not immoral, illegal or unethical. He’s just a hard-nosed businessman who seizes opportunities.”

Lots of business people know how to seize opportunities and make money. Thomason has taken that acumen to a whole new level.

The 78-year-old entrepreneur-turned-developer has built, by his own estimate, 80% of the subdivisions in Livingston Parish, and his companies and those run by his son and nephew are now gaining dominance in neighboring Ascension Parish. Along the way, he has made a fortune estimated, by some, to be worth hundreds of millions.

Unlike most developers, however, Thomason flies below radar. About the only time he has ever made headlines was in 2006, when he sold a big chunk of his operation to national homebuilder D.R. Horton for $35 million. For the most part, he remains a virtually unknown commodity in Baton Rouge business circles. He keeps a low profile, dresses humbly, lives in the same Watson house he purchased for $75,000 and never darkens the doorsteps of the City Club or the Baton Rouge Area Chamber.

But Thomason is a force to be reckoned with, at least in the parishes where his power is based. He is as respected as he is reviled, a self-made man described by those who know him as having a tireless work ethic, a brilliant mind, an insatiable desire for money and, above all, a gift for negotiating that is unlike anything anyone who’s ever gone up against him has ever seen.

“He was slow talking and believable and he could out-negotiate anybody,” says attorney Fred H. Belcher Jr., who represented Thomason in the 1960s when he first came to Baton Rouge as a young businessman. “But he was shrewd. He’d chew you up and spit you out.”

Wheeling and dealing

However Thomason came by those traits, by birth or by necessity or by some combination of the two, they served him well in his rise from the relative poverty into which he was born. He’s not actually sure whether the year was 1932 or 1933, but it was the height of the Great Depression in rural Palestine, Texas, about 115 miles southeast of Dallas.

Thomason was the second child and eldest son in the family. His father was a carpenter and would-be entrepreneur who owned a few cows. His mother raised the seven kids, and they all worked hard. Thomason had no formal education and claims to have left school after the second grade. By the age of 14, he had his commercial license and was driving a truck for a local contractor.

“Money was an unknown commodity,” says Thomason, who still possesses a slow, east Texas drawl. “Most people then were what would be considered today very, very poor. But we didn’t know we were poor.”

Thomason figured it out fairly early on and decided to do something about it. It has shaped his character and career ever since. Those people who have known him for a long time say making money is his vocation and his avocation. He does not disagree.

“I always believed that I could be better off and that I should be and owed it to myself to be,” Thomason says.

At 18, he enlisted in the military and served briefly in the Korean War. When he returned home, he began working for a small construction company, a job that eventually brought him to Baton Rouge to scout out new markets for his employer. He ended up staying, settling first in north Baton Rouge, then in Tara. At some point, his dealings brought him to American Bank, then headed by the late Cliff Ourso.

“Cliff Ourso could spot a performer,” says a local builder who has known Thomason for more than 20 years. “He knew Allen was a performer.”

The bank lent Thomason money, and he embarked on a series of business ventures, many of which proved remarkably successful. He founded Plaquemine Sand and Gravel, which dredged aggregate from the Mississippi River and eventually grew large enough to supply major industrial users for projects like the River Bend Nuclear Generating Station. He also ran a pipe company that was a division of Armco, and later founded Southeastern Engineering, which did a lot of highway and road work in the metro area.

From the get-go, Thomason’s entire family was involved in his companies. In the early years his brothers moved here from Texas to work with him. Later, his children, nieces and nephews became involved in the family businesses. They worked in the field and in the offices, with Thomason, the undisputed patriarch of the clan, always cracking the whip.

“He had them working 15-20 hours a day,” Belcher says. “He controlled them like a dictator.”

He was also a wheeler-dealer, who would push the edge of the envelope when it was necessary. Belcher remembers once when Plaquemine Sand and Gravel was having a hard time making its note on the large dredge that was its lifeline. The Chicago-based company that owned the equipment had threatened to seize it, so Thomason and Belcher flew up to Illinois to try talking them out of it.

“He went up there to beg them for time and talk to them in that slow, believable, country voice of his,” Belcher says. “While we were up there, he had his brothers move the dredge upriver so the owners couldn’t find it if they came to take it back.”

No one ever accused Thomason of making off with an expensive piece of heavy machinery, and he eventually settled up with the dredge owner. But it’s a story that’s vintage Thomason. This is a guy, after all, who kept pet lions at his home in Tara in the 1960s, even though he had toddler-age children underfoot at the time. He also had a somewhat aggressive baboon that once took a swipe at his first wife. He’s brazen and not afraid of taking risks.

JUBAN PARC-ED: Vicknair Builders, run by Allen Thomason Jr. and Anthony Thomason, is constructing houses in Juban Parc in the $130,000 range—about 50% less than the original price point of homes in the Denham Springs development. Some residents say the new homes—with vinyl siding and without architectural shingles—violate the original building guidelines.

“He’s an amazing person,” a former associate says. “Not a wonderful person, necessarily, but an amazing person.”

He is also incredibly intelligent, despite his lack of formal education, with a knack for sniffing out lucrative opportunities. He bought a Chrysler dealership in Alabama in the mid-1980s, right before Lee Iacocca turned the auto manufacturer around. He founded an off-price designer retail chain with his brothers in the early 1980s, just about the time discount designer wear was becoming trendy. He even briefly owned Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches because it seemed like a good investment. If there was money to be made, Thomason was on it.

“Chance favors a prepared mind,” one of Thomason’s longtime associates says. “Allen Thomason has the ultimate prepared mind.”

More house for less money

Such a gift helps explain how Thomason got into real estate in Livingston Parish. It wasn’t part of some premeditated scheme to build an empire in what was then the boonies, but rather an opportunity to which Thomason was in a position to respond.

It was the late 1980s, in the wake of the savings and loan crisis, and land was plentiful at distressed prices, especially for a guy with cash. Thomason had the money, thanks to his many business ventures, and he sensed, correctly, that Livingston was where the population was headed.

“Even then the shift had started out of East Baton Rouge and into Livingston and Ascension,” Thomason says. “It looked to me like there was more growth potential for normal home building than in East Baton Rouge proper.”

Thomason started one subdivision at a time. Oak Hill was his first. Others soon followed, with generic names like Acadiana Place, Crestwood and Richmond Place. The developments themselves were generic, too, and his pattern of development was formulaic. But it worked. Thomason would buy the land cheap, often paying cash. He especially favored picking up subdivisions that were already under way but teetering on the brink.

“When you’re a developer there’s a threshold point of being able to meet your notes at the bank,” Talbot says. “And Allen Thomason comes along and says, ‘I have $1 million worth of cash and will pay you all cash,’ and so even if you have $2 million worth of lots you need to get out from under, you take it.”

Once he had the land, Thomason would construct simple, tract houses not unlike those built by KB Home or D.R. Horton. They were starter homes that lacked amenities like spa tubs and granite kitchens. The subdivisions themselves were underwhelming, too, with minimal landscaping. But that kept his margins low and made his homes affordable to the working- and middle-class market he was targeting.

“Where our greatest effort and probably the greatest reason for success is attempting to deliver to someone more house for less money than they could get anywhere else in a location that they want to live in,” he says. “We let the market dictate to us where to build as opposed to dictating to the market.”

A key component of Thomason’s operation was his business arrangement with M.A. Allen Realtors, which for more than 20 years exclusively listed and sold his properties and, as a result, just about all the houses in Livingston Parish. The arrangement dates back to Thomason’s earliest years in Livingston real estate. Mary Anne Allen was a fledgling agent and the wife of his friend D.W. Allen, a Denham Springs banker.

“Once, when I first got my license, he called the office about some property, and I started taking stuff to him and it went from there,” Allen says. “Then he had some lots he wanted to build houses on and at that time there was not any new construction in Livingston, and he asked if I wanted to list them.”

She did, thus beginning an informal but formidable partnership. His operation grew to include a mortgage and title company, and within a few years Thomason and Allen had what some describe as a virtual stranglehold on the Livingston Parish market. In many respects they still dominate the parish. As recently as last year, M.A. Allen did $59 million in sales in Livingston Parish, 64% more than its next closest competitor, Coldwell Banker Mackey Denham Springs, which did $36 million.

“They had a web because they sold houses to everyone in the parish, and their referrals came from the people they had dealt with,” Talbot says. “If you’re a new guy trying to break in, where’s your market?”

Having a monopoly over all facets of the business was important because it kept competitors at bay. It also enabled Thomason’s operation to make a small profit at each point in the process. He therefore escaped the pressure to make too much off of any individual house or any particular aspect of the business.

“The reason we have been successful is our willingness to take a reasonable profit—say 10%—for that total service instead of trying to make too much money every time somebody buys a house,” he says. “Where most developers fail is in trying to make $50,000 off of a single house.”

Perception vs. reality

Not surprisingly, Thomason has his detractors, and his business model has rubbed many in Livingston, and now Ascension, the wrong way. They grumble about the quality of Thomason’s homes, complaining the houses are cheap and hastily built, with little concern for quality or aesthetics. On the surface, at least, there is some validity to this criticism.

“I know several Realtor friends who don’t show his developments because after you get past the one-year warranty they’ll fall apart on you,” says a local agent who asked not to be identified.

Thomason will be the first to concede his homes are inexpensive. But they’re not cheap, he insists, and there’s a difference. He says he scrimps on the bells and whistles—the fixtures and finishings—but not on building materials or workmanship.

“You cannot build a poor-quality much of anything and stay in business over 20 or 30 years,” he says. “We might spend less on the amenities, but we don’t cut corners on the house itself. The question we try to answer is whether we’re better off with a better countertop or an additional bedroom for the kids.”

Still, the perception exists that Thomason is only out to make a buck, and his critics complain that he has given little consideration to the long-term impact of his developments on the parish.

“You like to see developers come in and really create a quality product, and that’s what Livingston needs—more quality products,” says one life-long Denham Springs resident who is well connected in political and business circles. “They’re just interested in getting in and getting out and selling the cheapest crap they can.”

Thomason’s critics don’t make those comments just because he builds tract housing. They complain that he has truly lowered the value of real estate in their parish in general, and in some subdivisions in particular.

Juban Parc is one of them. Thomason bought a majority of the unfinished lots in the Denham Springs subdivision last year because they weren’t selling and the New Mexico-based developer wanted out. He turned the lots over to Vicknair Builders, the family construction company now run by his son and nephew, Allen Thomason Jr. and Anthony Thomason. They started constructing houses in the $130,000 range—about 50% less than the original price point of homes in the Brown Road development.

That was troubling enough to residents, who’d paid a lot more a year or two earlier. What infuriates them, however, is that the new homes appear to violate the building guidelines that were part of the original subdivision restrictions. The homes are smaller, with vinyl siding, and don’t have architectural shingles on the roofs. Residents are furious. Some residents, like Carolyn Barr, have moved out.

“I bought in this subdivision because this was supposed to be a premier neighborhood,” says Barr, who paid $190,000 for the 1,450-square-foot house in early 2009 and sold it a year later for $164,000. “There wasn’t supposed to be vinyl siding on the homes. Now all the houses built by Vicknair have vinyl on three sides.”

Thomason says he didn’t violate any covenants when he bought the development. He claims the developers changed the building guidelines before he signed the deal with them. Whether those changes were part of the negotiations is unclear. The important thing, Thomason says, is that homes in Juban Parc are selling again, after sitting dormant on the market for the previous 12 months.

“There were people out there with houses priced at $175,000, and we came in and built a better house for $140,000,” Thomason says. “That drew some adverse reaction from the property owners, but all we were doing was establishing a market value.”

A deal he couldn’t refuse

In recent years, the Thomason operation has changed somewhat, though the overall business model remains the same. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the demand for housing in the Baton Rouge exurbs, D.R. Horton came into the market and made the ultimate dealmaker a deal he couldn’t refuse: $35 million for the bulk of his Livingston Parish operations, including 1,000 finished lots and more than 350 homes under construction in 10 subdivisions. Horton also took over the operation of Thomason’s mortgage and title company, and made him sign a two-year noncompete clause.

That officially got Thomason out of the homebuilding business, for a while, at least, but he has hardly been idle since that time. His noncompete only prevented him from building houses, not developing land, and he has continued to buy land and develop it into subdivisions, which he then sells for further development or, in some cases, to his own family.

Vicknair Builders has picked up where Thomason’s companies left off before the Horton deal. Since acquiring the previously dormant Keystone of Galvez in Ascension Parish last year, they’ve sold more than 75 homes—all well under the $200,000 price range.

“He’s a good businessman and I feel good about his companies and the people he has around him,” says Kevin Nguyen, who sold Thomason $10 million worth of lots in 2008 and 2009 in Ascension Parish subdivisions. “They build quality houses at affordable prices.”

In a more recent but no less significant change, M.A. Allen is no longer the listing agent for the homes constructed by Vicknair Builders. Instead, Anthony Thomason’s wife Kim, who until recently worked for M.A. Allen, will handle the listings in the same way the national homebuilders do it—entering the listings directly into the MLS, then getting a commission if they sell.

Allen says there are no hard feelings, even though her firm is losing what has been the lion’s share of its business for the past 20 years. In fact, she says, she’s grateful for everything she has gotten from Thomason and his family.

“I appreciated it for all the years I had it,” she says. “You’re never happy to lose it. But there shouldn’t be any hard feelings. It’s just business.”

THE THOMASON EMPIRE

A partial list of subdivisions developed by Allen Thomason:

Ascension Parish

Ascension Trace

Galvez Oaks

Keystone of Galvez

Lakes at St. Amant

River Ridge

Livingston Parish

Acadiana Place

Autumn Run

Carter Hills

Crestwood

Easterly Lakes

Fairway View

Fountainbleau

Juban Parc

Montrose

Oak Hill

Regency Place

Richmond Place

South Point

Woodland Ridge