Car dealers lead list again: construction firm Sky Blue Builders posts highest revenue gain.

• Position: TOP 50 MINORITY-OWNED BUSINESSES - Company overview

SEEING BACK IN 2008 THAT COMMERCIAL construction was stalling, Mowa Haile of Sky Blue Builders equipped his firm to compete in the only sector with a pulse - the government.

The small general contractor seized opportunities and posted the highest revenue jump among this year's Top 50 Minority-Owned Companies with a gain of 582 percent, from $170,000 in 2009 to $1.16 million last year.

"Obviously the growth curve, that's hockey-stick growth," says Haile, 38, who founded the company in 2007 with two partners and is a finalist for the inaugural ColoradoBiz Minority Businessperson of the Year (profiled on page 33.) This year, he says, Sky Blue is on track for revenues of S4 million.

The top two firms overall in the Top 50 Minority-Owned Companies ranking are unchanged from a year ago, both ear dealerships: No. 1 Mike Shaw Automotive Group with sales of $252 million, and No. 2 Alpine Buick Pontiac GMC with sales of $40 million. Both showed encouraging gains, with Shaw improving revenues 27 percent over the previous year and Alpine growing 19 percent.

But nobody's growth approached that of Greenwood Village-based Sky Blue Builders, which started out four years ago in residential, just before that sector tanked.

Through the Denver Metro Small Business Development Center, Haile learned about government contracting, and in 2009 Sky Blue Builders became certified as a Small Business Enterprise, Minority/Women Enterprise and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise.

Sky Blue Builders' growth in 2010 was fueled mainly by two large contracts with the city of Denver: a S650,000 project for the sidewalks and irrigation systems on both sides of Park Avenue West from Colfax to 20th Avenue; and a half-million dollar project to build new rest-rooms at Vanderbilt Park and Berkeley Park.

But it's not only government contracts that have propelled Sky Blue, as evidenced by the framed invoice for Enterprise Rent-A-Car from two years ago that Haile keeps in his office. It was only an S800 job to replace the keypad door handle at an Enterprise office, but it's led to about 50 more projects, as Sky Blue now does Enterprise's repair and maintenance for offices from Pueblo to Fort Collins.

"The size of it may be small, but to a client, the small projects arc as important as a big project," Haile says. "That keypad allowed entry into their office, so it was critical to them. They had called around to sec if anyone could fix it the next day. They basically said can you do this by tomorrow? We said, 'We'll be there.'"

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Sky Blue Builders also has a regional master contracting agreement with Grainger, the industrial supply giant, as one of three designated general contractors in the Western United States. And Sky Blue is a strategic partner in the $125 million expansion of Denver International Airport's south terminal slated to begin early next year.

"That's obviously a big game changer for us, not only in terms of revenue, but the type of project," Haile says. "It really gives you a nice portfolio, too, to show to other clients."

Top 50 Minority-Owned Companies Ranked by revenue % CHANGE 2011 2010 '10 GROSS '09 GROSS RANK RANK COMPANY REVENUES REVENUES (OOO'S) (OOO'S) 1 1 Mike Shaw Automotive Group $ 252,088 $ 197,946 27% 2 2 Alpine Buick Pontiac GMC 39,999 33,592 19% 3 4 Ayuda Management...