DENVER-The company keeps its crews busy with $30 million in contracts to build or renovate public and private schools throughout the metropolitan area. Population growth forces some school expansion projects.

DENVER-Competition will come from cities in California, Texas as well as New York City, but the high cost of providing security for the 2004 Republican Party national convention may offset the economic windfall it would produce.

VAIL, CO-The plans include a sky yard, village park, an 11,000-sf spa, 12 fractional-interest residents and improvements to its Mountain Road area. The work is in addition to the $400-million renovation of Lionshead in Vail.

DENVER-Wheeler Trigg & Kennedy takes an additional 12,000 sf at 1801 California St. to accommodate a staff that has doubled to 113 in just four years, with six more attorneys arriving this month.

DENVER-Houston-based Hanover Co. is adding 288 rental units in a 24-story building, hoping to avoid the fate of garden-style projects in suburban areas that have been hard hit by vacancies.

DENVER-The first new construction, affordable rental loft project ever built in Denver opens Downtown Thursday at 2135 Stout St. The 81-unit project will serve Downtown workers priced out of local housing as well as former homeless persons.

AURORA, CO-A 57,560-sf Albertson's will anchor the 108,000-sf Somerset Village Shopping Center on a 16-acre site at East Mississippi Avenue and South Buckley Road. A Good Times Hamburger and Frozen Custard restaurant and a TCF Bank also have signed on.

DENVER-The asking price for the 500,000-sf plant on 28.5 acres at Interstate 70 and Pecos St. is $12.5 million. Replacement cost is $20 million, says Candis Hewitt, leading the Cushman & Wakefield brokerage team that is marketing the property.