By Kathryn White
Travelers along West 38th Avenue between Tennyson and Irving encounter numerous active construction projects and vacant lots carrying “for sale” signs these days. Beyond the visible, site development plans have been filed with the city for several more.
Most of this stretch of West 38th is zoned U-MS-3, which stands for “Urban Neighborhood Context, Main Street” with building heights maxing out at three stories. A few sections are zoned for two or five stories.
Denver Zoning Code’s “U” designation for “neighborhood context” generally characterizes residential uses where commercial areas, think shop fronts, serve nearby residents. Main Street (MS) zone districts typically constitute block faces intended to “promote safe, active, and pedestrian-scaled commercial streets through building forms that clearly define and activate the public street edge.”
The Denver North Star caught up with representatives for a few projects taking place along West 38th and looked at plans filed with the city to learn about what North Denver can expect from the transformation underway.
4345 W. 38th Ave.
The most visible of the projects is a 40-unit apartment building under construction at West 38th and Tennyson, where Country Gentleman’s Liquor store and Tennyson’s Tap operated until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of the market-rate rental units will be one-bedroom or two-bedroom, with a few studios. Square footage will range from 550 to 1,000.
As required by zoning, retail will take up most of the ground floor.
Frank Campise, the Chicago-based real estate investor behind the project, walked 100 miles of Denver over five days in 2020 to scout out areas of the city where he might invest. He stopped people on the street, asking them what they liked and disliked about the areas of Denver where he spent time. The Tennyson Street corridor reminded him of the pedestrian-friendly Southport neighborhood in Chicago’s Lakeview community.
“That space hasn’t been activated in a number of years,” Campise said of the Tennyson corner. “To activate that space right at the gateway into the corridor is going to be a nice benefit to the neighborhood. We’re excited to deliver something that people will be happy to see.”
Campise said the building is on track to be finished in the last quarter of this year.
3838 N. Perry St.
Five blocks west, at the northeast corner of West 38th and Perry where Lampert Hitch used to stand, RedT Homes is set to build three duplexes (six units) and three townhomes (19 units).
The homes have been designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, the highest possible level in the multifactor point system designed to gauge a building’s environmental friendliness. Units will start at two bedrooms and extend up to five bedrooms, and range in size from 1,168 to 3,017 square feet. Some will have rooftop decks, and all but one will have at least a one-car garage.
Because the property extends into a residential area zoned for single-family housing, the developer sought a zoning change to U-MS-3 in order to pursue the higher-density project. RedT worked with Berkeley Regis United Neighbors (BRUN) to inform and work with neighbors on ideas for the site.
Bill Killam, chair of BRUN’s Zoning and Planning Committee, was pleased with the one-year process between neighbors and RedT that resulted in a so-called good neighbor development agreement (GNDA). Neighbors negotiated for lower building heights where new construction will meet existing single-family homes and open-porch concepts for the homes along Perry, to retain the pedestrian and neighborhood-friendly feel of the block.
Killam added that developers had a unique feature to work around. The historic Rocky Mountain Ditch that takes water out of Clear Creek and runs it through Wheat Ridge and parts of the West Highland and Berkeley neighborhoods (mostly below ground, but in some segments above) runs diagonally under the site of the RedT development before ultimately ending at Rocky Mountain Lake. It’s an active ditch with water rights, Killam said, owned by Rocky Mountain Water Company (Molson/Coors).
RedT’s Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Bree said that two homes will be designated as affordable housing for owners making 80% of Denver’s area median income. The project is scheduled for completion in August 2025.
3930 W. 38th Ave.
Across the street, on the southeast corner of West 38th and Perry, a crumbling cement platform remains on the lot where El Chapultepec Too once stood. A for-sale sign reads “Shovel-Ready Apartment Building or Franchise Site!”
A concept plan filed with the city describes the shovel-ready project as a three-story, 28-unit apartment structure with ground floor retail or restaurant space and 18 parking spaces.
3805 N. Newton St.
A fenced-off lot at the corner of West 38th and Newton, next to Taco Bell, is the future site of a two-story, six-condo structure with two attached garages, according to a site concept plan filed with the city. A nearby resident said the site formerly held a single-family structure that had been converted into a dental office.
Stultz Homes, listed on signage posted at the site, includes the property on the upcoming projects page of its website, stating they are coming in December 2024.
3301 W. 38th Ave.
The site of the former Thai Basil restaurant at 38th and Irving will become a three-story, 44-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail, according to a site development plan filed with the city.
A representative for the developers pointed The Denver North Star to a March 2022 article on the project in The Denver Post. The story reported that developers John Cianci and Mike Carnes bought the property in 2018 and cycled through a number of plans for it, including a hotel and condominiums, before landing on the current plan.
The plan filed with the city shows studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments ranging from 328 to 813 square feet as well as 24 parking spaces.
The city’s Expanding Housing Affordability (EHA) policy, enacted in 2022, applies stronger requirements than previously for housing developments of over 10 units to contribute to the city’s affordable housing goals. Projects already in the process of gaining city approvals and permits at that time, which was the case for most of the projects described above, did not trigger new EHA requirements.
Readers with an interest in following these and other North Denver construction developments can look at site development plans on the city’s Maps page at www.denvergov.org/maps, dive deeper into plan drawings (and much more) using a free account at www.denvergov.org/epermits, and connect with their nearest Registered Neighborhood Organization (RNO). A searchable map of RNOs can be found at www.denvergov.org/Maps/map/neighborhoodorganizations.
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