Parisi Is Rebuilding at 44th and Tennyson. At the Other End of the Street, Cenizas Shows How a Comeback Goes.

The building at West 44th Avenue and Tennyson Street went up in 1904 as a grocery. In the 1990s it was a resale clothing shop. Since 2004 it has been Parisi. It has now been dark for six months. The fire on May 12, 2026 shut down the upstairs restaurant and Parisi Sotto in the basement. If you've walked past since spring, the windows tell you very little about what's going on inside.

What's going on inside is a rebuild by the person who owns the walls. On Tennyson Street, the places that last here, and the places that come back after a hard year, are usually run by people who own their buildings. Five blocks south at 3900 Tennyson, Cenizas showed this spring what that kind of return looks like.

What the Water Did at 4401 Tennyson

The fire itself was small. In a note on Parisi's website, Christine Parisi writes that the fire "did very little except in the crawl space beneath the roof." The water used to put it out "permeated every crevice." Most ceilings and walls in the public spaces, upstairs and down, have been torn out to the studs.

That's why the reopening date keeps moving. She writes that the damage "has been progressively worse than originally thought." Her FAQ answers the reopening question with "very early to say," and points to sometime in 2027. She also says updates will go in a box at the top of the site and on Instagram at @PARISIDenver.

Parisi didn't start on this corner. It opened in 1998 as an Italian market on Lowell Boulevard, selling panini, pasta, deli products and imported dry goods. Christine Parisi told Westword that it "was not necessarily a restaurant in the beginning," and pizza only came after someone recommended putting a stone in an old deck oven. The move to Tennyson took two years of renovation, starting in 2002. Firenze a Tavola opened in the basement in 2006. It closed during the pandemic and came back for the 2024 holiday season as Parisi Sotto.

That adds up to about 22 years in one building. After the fire, she told Westword, "I own the building and both restaurants housed in the building."

June's Choice, and the Upgrades Now on the List

In early June, the path forward wasn't settled yet. Westword described three options for an old building with this much water damage: rebuild, renovate, or move to a new location entirely. The outlet noted that insurance could cover much of the repair work, but not all of it. In that interview, Christine Parisi framed the choice this way:

"I can either rebuild or do the full renovation I've been envisioning for many years. But I won't do both."

The note now on her website says remediation and rebuilding are underway, and it makes room for the upgrades. "NOW is the time to do every update & upgrade I have dreamed of, but was just too busy to implement," she writes, and promises "a thoughtful flow" when the spaces reopen. She had bought out her business partner in 2019 planning a major remodel, and the pandemic put that on hold. The rebuild gives her an opening for some of what she had been planning for seven years.

Only an owner can make that call. A tenant whose space is gutted to the studs is negotiating with a landlord, an insurer and a lease clock all at once. An owner-operator can decide the building's next 20 years in one conversation with herself. Westword also reported that the community and suppliers helped right after the fire, including Performance Food, which lent a refrigerated truck for a couple of days to save product.

Five Blocks South, an Owner Came Back to His Own Room

Cenizas at 3900 Tennyson is what the other end of this process looks like.

According to the Denver Post, Nicolas Medina bought the property in 2014 for $775,000 and converted it from apartments into a 5,000-square-foot restaurant space. He's a general contractor and did much of the work himself. He ran Tres Chiles there from 2018 through 2023. He then leased the space to Santo Remedio, which stayed from early 2024 to mid-2025 before moving to Jefferson Park.

When the tenant left, the building went back to its owner. Medina reopened it himself. Westword's April 11 openings roundup listed Cenizas Mexican Restaurant & Cantina among that week's debuts. The name is Spanish for "ashes," and Medina told the Post he "feels like a phoenix." He described the restaurant as "some of the same, but new, better and different."

Because he knew the room, opening went quickly. The Post reported that Medina had little build-out to do beyond warming the space up with more fire elements, a nod to the name. The menu brings back family recipes from his native Mexico that Tres Chiles regulars will recognize. The plan also called for weekend breakfast and brunch built around chilaquiles, plus more burgers, steaks and meat-filled sandwiches than before. As of the April roundup, specials included $5 margaritas on Mondays and half-off tacos on Tuesdays. Medina has lived in Berkeley for 20 years and built his own house a few blocks from the restaurant.

Why Owning the Walls Changes the Timeline

Each address had a closure, and in each case the reopening was decided by the person who already held the deed. Medina's property sat between restaurants for months, and he got to choose what went in next, including himself. Christine Parisi is facing a much bigger repair, and she can fold upgrades she put off in 2019 into the rebuild without a lease clock running.

Part of what this street protects is continuity of character. Parisi was a neighborhood market before it was a restaurant. Its owner is using the rebuild to fix how people move through the building, not to change who it's for. "I opened Parisi to be an affordable community staple, not a bougie, higher-priced fine-dining experience," she writes on the restaurant's site. Medina told the Post he wants Cenizas to feel like "a warm place to be with your family, with your partner, with your friends."

Tennyson has newer arrivals too. Two Hands has run its Berkeley location at 3985 Tennyson for about two years, and BusinessDen reported in August that founder Henry Roberts is adding a second spot in Cherry Creek. The north and south anchors of the stretch, though, are the two addresses where the operator and the owner are the same person. If you know the street mainly from First Fridays, these two buildings are a big part of why it feels the same from year to year.

What Comes Back to 44th and Tennyson

Christine Parisi has already said a lot about what the rebuilt building will be. From her FAQ on parisidenver.com:

• The menu: "mostly" the same, with pricing "mildly adjusted."
• The line: online ordering and waitlisting, "instead of standing in line."
• Sotto: likely becomes a self-sufficient special events and private dining space with its own entrance. Events will probably run weekly in the spirit of Firenze a Tavola, and the space may also host pop-ups, meetings and guest-chef nights. She is looking at adding a separate efficiency kitchen and restrooms downstairs.
• Gift cards: keep them. The plastic cards don't expire, and the gift card system and its data will be rebuilt.

A separately accessed Sotto changes the building more than anything else on that list. The old basement restaurant shared a front door with a busy takeout counter. The new one would run as its own room on its own schedule, which gives the 44th Avenue end of Tennyson a private-event venue it hasn't had before.

Until then, the corner stays dark this winter. Cenizas at 3900 is open.

I've been following both of these buildings because Tennyson Street is part of everyday life for the Berkeley clients I work with. If you're thinking about what the next few years on this street look like from your own block, The Source at SERHANT. is happy to talk it through, along with what we're seeing across Berkeley. Work With Us.