Local duo begin work on long-planned building at former Berkeley restaurant site

Ilan Salzberg and John Cianci are going vertical on their corner lot at the intersection of two Denver neighborhoods.

The developer duo, through their firm SC&P LLC, started construction in January on an apartment building on their half-acre lot at 3301 W. 38th Ave., where the West Highland neighborhood blends into Berkeley. It comes after over six years of changing plans and partners on the project.

“A lot of projects, they’re hitting the hard pause button right now,” Cianci said. “And we’re trying not to do that.”

Cianci and some other partners purchased the site at the intersection of Irving Street and 38th Avenue, formerly home to a Thai restaurant, in September 2018 for $2.6 million. Salzberg joined the project a few years later after other partners exited.

The two expect to complete the building by the summer of 2026. The three-story structure will have 44 market-rate apartments up top and 7,000 square feet of retail space down below. It will be made of steel, brick and concrete. While more expensive up front, the structure will be more durable than the traditional wood frame projects common around town.

The final cost: “Well into the eight digits,” Salzberg said.

The pair, both 48 years old, are “self-performing” developers, meaning they act as the general contractor on their projects. Cianci hails from a construction family and holds master’s degrees in environmental and civil engineering. Salzberg, a Denver native, has a law degree from the University of Denver.

The two have built dozens of projects around town since the early 2000s, from single-family homes to ground-up industrial development. Salzberg estimates that they have completed about a half-dozen projects that cost over $5 million and a “bunch more” between $1 million and $5 million.

“Our operating expenses are less over time, which allows us to be more competitive on rents,” Salzberg said.

The project at 38th and Irving has evolved over the years. When Cianci bought the property, a hotel was planned. But that idea was killed by the pandemic.

He returned to the drawing board and came up with the current proposal, spending the past few years working through the city’s permitting process and securing financing. Last year, he completed “horizontal” work on site, putting in utilities and infrastructure for the building.

“We decided it’s a nice time to go vertical now. There’s a lot of things delivering in Denver, but there’s going to be a gap in a year, a year and a half from now, where there’s nothing being delivered. Nobody’s really champing [at the bit] to start. So it’s kind of a nice time to build,” Cianci said.

The corner lot is not the only development site keeping the pair busy.

Cianci and Salzberg are working through the city approval process on an apartment project at 29th Avenue and Xavier Street near Sloan’s Lake. Plans are also in the works for a residential development at 38th Avenue and Wolff Street, currently a single-family home on a 0.75-acre lot, but that requires the property to be rezoned first.

That process is no walk in the park.

“We tried to rezone [38th and Wolff] to open space to do an upscale club pool. … We had 100 people champing at the bit to buy membership, but the immediate neighbors flipped out and said, ‘We want affordable housing here,’” Salzberg said.

“Affordable housing is its own challenge, because you have to pre-commit to certain things, and there’s no funding. So it’s a chicken-and-egg cycle,” he added.

So now the developers are back at the drawing board. They hope to do housing at the site, but the form it will come in, townhomes or apartments, is still being ironed out.

Get more real estate and business news by signing up for our weekly newsletter, On the Block.