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Masonry Pioneer

Denver ‘Brick Man’ Dan Berich Celebrates a Legacy of Important Projects

Dan Berich, Founder,
Dan Berich, Inc.

Denver, CO (2001) - Dan Berich shifts a little uncomfortably in his chair when someone calls him a “masonry pioneer,” but no one in Colorado has a better claim to that title.

Berich is the founder of Dan Berich Inc., one of the area’s oldest and most successful commercial masonry contractors. Since its inception in 1971, the firm has worked with many of the state’s biggest GCs, consistently landing high-profile public and private sector projects.

Now semi-retired, Dan Berich has turned the operations of the company over to his son Todd, who serves as president. Together with their staff of 50 people, they run one of the most formidable and respected masonry teams in the business.

As one might expect, the love of masonry has been in the Berich blood for more than a couple of generations. But the family’s Colorado masonry legacy began back in 1960 when Dan was first asked to bid for a job on a small apartment house at 10th and Pearl streets. He had been doing mostly single-family residences up until then, but that project led him to build several more load-bearing masonry apartment houses during the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1965, Dan built the 17-story Park Mayfair Apartments at 9th and Eudora streets in Denver, the largest load-bearing masonry project on the continent at that time. At Park Mayfair, he worked with George Hanson, known as the father of load-bearing masonry engineering.

Masonry arch created by Dan Berich Inc. at the Riverfront Center in Littleton

His firm built 30 or 40 load-bearing masonry apartment buildings in Denver and Colorado Springs over the next two decades. Dan said that one of his favorite projects was the Riverfront Center in Littleton, now Echostar’s regional headquarters, challenging because of its masonry diversity.

Among Berich’s biggest jobs was the massive, 1,000-unit Speer Center apartments at 10th and Speer Boulevard in Denver, where more than 100 people worked on the masonry portion alone.

Dan Berich Inc. has also done some of the area’s biggest retail projects, including the University Hills Shopping Center, the core of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center (working with Etkin) and at least 40 new King Soopers stores across Colorado.

The Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs kept the firm busy in the early ‘90s, and its bigger public projects have included the Arapahoe Country Youth Detention Center, Red Rocks Community College and the Aurora Criminal Justice Center.

The firm also specializes in rehabilitation and remodeling work, with several loft projects to their credit, including the Stadium Lofts and the Icehouse Lofts in LoDo, which Dan said is one of his favorite places to work because of its “masonry magic – it makes the whole area feel warm and comfortable.”

Dan claimed that his life’s work with nearly every kind of masonry material has been everything he wanted it to be. “I loved it so much, I would have done it for nothing,” he said, “and a couple of times we did.”

Riverfront Center reveals the versatility of masonry styles and materials.

For both Todd and Dan Berich, masonry is an art form first and a business second. Dan agrees with many of his older masonry colleagues – whose small businesses also became much larger over the years – that he’d “still rather go out and lay brick than stay in the office.” But his growing company has demanded that he use his management and estimating skills more often than his trowel over the last 20 years.

Now the daily business of the firm falls on the shoulders of Todd, who said that his role there “just kind of fell into place.” There was no pressure from his father to join the family business years ago, “but it was meant to be,” Todd said.

He has a degree in business from Ft. Lewis College and served a full apprenticeship as a union brick mason. He started with the company in the mid ‘80s and worked for more than 12 years as an estimator, purchasing agent, project manager and contract negotiator.

“I’m glad Todd came on board during those tough years in the late 1980s,” Dan said. “He got to see right away what the lean times are like.”

The company also has the capable help of Vice President Andy Cooper, who graduated from Colorado State University’s Construction Management program. Cooper came in to do estimating and project management and was eventually promoted to vice president.

The Berich management team has taken the company through some materials transitions as well as market changes. The firm initially did mostly brick work, then added block projects in the 1980s and now does it all, including stone. “We’ll do anything and everything,” Todd said.

Dan agreed that today’s marketplace requires a lot of experience with different materials and diverse capabilities, “but I’ve been a brick man all my life,” he said. “We will build with anything, but I like working with brick because it makes me feel good inside, and when you’re done, it will last a long time.”

The best proof of that statement is Dan’s life work, a palette of solid masonry buildings spread across the Front Range. That includes the dozens of load-bearing apartment buildings that still house thousands of people in Capitol Hill and Denver’s other neighborhoods – built when this masonry pioneer was a young bricklayer.

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