Six days a week, for five decades, Bud Vecchiarelli walked from his home to work at the corner gas station and garage he owned in the Potter Highlands Historic District in northwest Denver.
Bud’s Zuni Service, with its red trim, red lettering and red lion logo, a symbol popular in North Denver, was a fixture on the southwest corner of 33rd Avenue and Zuni Street. Even after the long-neglected area was gentrified into one of Denver’s most popular neighborhoods starting in the late 1990s, the auto shop remained a touchpoint to an earlier era.
Already old when Vecchiarelli purchased it in the early 1970s, the building and lot hosted a Standard gas station, which he eventually converted into an auto repair shop. It was hard work at times, but it wasn’t only work.
After the shop closed at 5 p.m., long-time friends and customers would show up, the cards would come out, and the fun would begin. The scene was social, the ties forged across years, and the trust deep enough to allow for “wagers” to be made.
“Gambling went on,” Vecchairelli acknowledges, something he would have been hesitant to admit back in the day.
Bud and his wife, Bridgette, grew up in the neighborhood, and they share a blend of Italian and Irish heritage, mirroring the area’s history as an enclave for Catholic immigrants in the early 1900s. The Irish came first and then the Italians, lots of them. Italian-American is how the Vecchairellis self-identify, except when St. Patrick’s Day comes around.
The couple raised six children, but none of the kids had an interest in taking over the family business. As he approached his 80s, age and health became concerns. The tipping point came when Vecchiarelli had to fight off multiple rounds of COVID-19 during the pandemic.
The couple decided to sell in 2021. But before they could get the property formally listed, Celeste Ballerino and her investment partners, who heard the land was going up for sale through a mutual friend, made Vecchiarelli an offer he couldn’t refuse.
An agent with an eye
Ballerino grew up in New York City, and like the Vecchiarellis, was raised in an Italian-American community. She moved to Denver from California in the early 2000s and worked as a real estate agent, becoming co-owner of REMAX/Cherry Creek, a prominent real estate brokerage.
Through her work, she came to know Denver’s older neighborhoods intimately. For many years, she lived in Potter Highlands and now temporarily calls Washington Park home. With an eye for design, an understanding of what would sell, and a front-row seat to what properties were available, she got into the development business.
Steel and glass homes have replaced the brick bungalows and cottages of old across the city, a jarring contemporary aesthetic imposed on the fading charm of many of Denver’s older neighborhoods, especially those lacking a historic district designation. So many homes with incongruent architecture were going up on scraped lots that a decade ago it triggered the Denver “fugly” movement, a rejection of the soulless designs becoming more common.
Ballerino had a vision for something special on the rare lot she had landed in the Potter Highlands. She wanted it to feel like it had always belonged, an old friend of the neighborhood, but with an interior space that would appeal to a modern buyer.
She settled on a duplex with a modern “Italianate” design, a riff on one of the original architectural styles found in the area. Although not a prerequisite, she went with blond brick, a regional twist on Italianate-style homes that became popular in Denver.
The interior is minimalist and contemporary, with strong European influences. Ballerino’s personal design touches – abundant skylights, custom-fabricated stair treads, and hidden appliances — have been honed over 14 prior projects.
The main shower has a thick glass door and floor-to-ceiling tiles. There are French light fixtures and Canadian cabinets. The patio doors open up fully to a small yard and beyond that to a detached garage, a throwback to older designs. The two garages are attached and run parallel, narrow but long enough to fit two cars each.
Because she prefers to have greater control over the aesthetics and the outcome, Ballerino doesn’t build custom homes. It is a more personal and demanding approach, and higher risk, but the model has proven successful and personally more rewarding.
“It has been a long process to get this done,” Ballerino said. “It is a passion project.”
An early hurdle involved environmental remediation of the site, which housed gasoline tanks. Denver’s planning and permitting process is slow and cumbersome, and building in a historic district adds additional complications. The Highland United Neighbors Inc., HUNI, had the right to comment on her plan before the Denver Landmark Commission, which would make the final call.
“In this case we recommended approval and had no comments to change anything on the design,” said Tim Boers, chair of the planning and community development committee for HUNI.
The Commission doesn’t want a design that mimics the existing homes or buildings. It must be of its own time and place, not a clone, Boers said. But they also don’t want something so different and unconventional that it disrupts the fabric of a historic neighborhood.
Ballerino found a way to thread that needle. Some people miss having an auto repair shop in the neighborhood, Boers added. But that commercial lot was dropped into a residential block, probably in the early 1900s. Making it residential restores the flow.
Brick homes were once the norm in Denver, and the region was a brickmaking hub. Brick construction was seen as a way to reduce the fire risk. But that rich history has crumbled. The kilns are gone, and brick masonry represents a fading trade.
Ballerino thought she had secured a supply from a local distributor, only to be told that the blond color she ordered was discontinued. Revising her plans with Denver would have only generated delays and was a nonstarter. She scrambled and found another source, at a higher cost.
Denver required her to redo the curbs and sidewalks on the corner lot, which in turn required hiring a crew to control traffic. That cost about $25,000 more. Height limits kept the duplex to two stories, which in turn required a flat roof. Denver’s ever-tightening energy efficiency requirements added additional expenses. And supply chain disruptions morphed into tariffs, which she wasn’t able to get ahead of.
All the while, the real estate market was shifting and softening. Ballerino had initially expected to sell each duplex for around $1.7 million. The first of the two to hit the market, 3297 Zuni St., was listed at $1.495 million on Nov. 19, with its twin expected to list for a similar price.
Each home has 2,781 finished square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, a basement, a private backyard, and a detached two-car garage. And the duplex is completely brick, something rarely seen with new homes in Denver.
“It is a nice thing for the neighborhood. It was not an easy thing to do,” Ballerino said.
In search of a better life
The Rev. Walter M. Potter, a Baptist missionary, arrived in Denver in 1863 to start a church in the rough and tumble gold mining town. He homesteaded 320 acres on the hills west of Denver alongside his sister Lucy. But Potter died in 1866 at a young 29, and his land was eventually sold to residential developers in the early 1870s, according to a guide from Historic Denver.
The district named after Potter runs from 38th to 32nd avenues and from Zuni Street to Federal Boulevard. It became part of the city of Highland, which marketed its cleaner air and water and clean living as an alternative to Denver’s smog, tainted water and loose morals.
White Protestants from the East Coast and Midwest were the initial residents, with Germans and Scots mixed in, and they were followed by Irish immigrants. Faced with growing pains and a severe economic downturn following a crash in silver prices, residents of the 35 subdivisions woven into the quiltwork of Highland, including Potter Highlands, voted to join Denver in 1896.
The area’s conversion to a Catholic enclave accelerated in the early 1900s, when waves of Italian immigrants settled in the area, to the extent that the Highland and Sunnyside neighborhoods became known as Denver’s “Little Italy.” That lasted from the 1920s to the 1960s, when the children of many of those families started moving out to the western suburbs. Between the 1950s and 1970s, more Hispanic families moved in, further diversifying and enriching the area’s cultural heritage.
Over the past 25 years, the neighborhood has become predominantly white and higher-income, reflecting intense gentrification and a sharp rise in property values that has increasingly pushed out older families.
Bridgette, after touring the new home, said she is happy about what it will bring to the neighborhood where she has spent her life. About 12 years ago, the couple had posted a big for sale sign on the side of the garage to test the waters, she said. Not a single offer came in.
Maybe deep down, Bud wasn’t ready to let go back then. Even now, he feels the weight of five decades spent working at the corner lot, the reward that came with providing a service, the familiar faces now long gone, the smiles he won’t see again, the laughter now silent.
People come and go, but the memories remain, and beyond those, the homes that shelter both.