Babauta-Torres calls for lease renewal of Mariana Resort
Saipan casino license holder Best Sunshine International, Ltd. made its interest known this month to the Department of Public Lands in its bid to take over the Mariana Resort and Spa when its lease expires four years from now in 2018.
The more than $30-million hotel resort development and related infrastructure was financed, developed, and is presently occupied by a Japanese private interest.
The CNMI government has reportedly halted all ongoing negotiations with Mariana Resort when it was already close to reaching an agreement in renewing the public land lease held by the Japanese company Kan Pacific.
Mariana Resort is the oldest Japanese hotel investment on Saipan, with Kan Pacific having operated this investment here for 36 years. Mariana Resort remains one of the few Japanese-held investments on Saipan.
Mariana Resort employs over 80 local employees and provides tourism activities that are unique to the CNMI, such as horse riding and go-kart racing. The customers of Mariana Resort are mostly Japanese.
At its recent fundraising dinner held at Mariana Resort earlier in the month, Juan N. Babauta said, “Mariana Resort is critical for our tourism industry because the number of Japanese tourists is critical to ensure continuity of flights with direct service to Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan. The Babauta-Torres team appreciates and is grateful for the commitments and efforts of Mariana Resort in supporting our tourism industry over the last 36 years.”
A Babauta-Torres administration promises to treat all existing public land lessors fairly. “We will not allow any newcomer to trample, choke, or run over functioning businesses. Instead, we will facilitate and provide assistance to all newcomers, including Best Sunshine International, to identify suitable sites. The long-term interest of the Commonwealth is to establish and harness a trusting relationship with its business partners and not to derail such business relationship and confidence.”
The Babauta-Torres team remains confident that Best Sunshine International, with DPL’s guidance, can and will find suitable and sufficient public land for an integrated casino resort, other than the site leased by Mariana Resort in Marpi.
“Accommodating Best Sunshine and continuing Mariana Resort is a win-win proposition and consistent with our platform over our commitment to work together with existing hotels and resorts to improve our tourism economy in the Commonwealth, Guam, and Micronesia, said former senator Juan S. Torres, candidate for lieutenant governor. (PR)
I rarely agree with these buffoons, but they are spot on with respect to this issue. Biba Marianas Resort!
IF Inos does NOT get elected, this controversy will be mute anyway as Pete will be out also and I doubt that ANY of the others running would allow the Chinese to chase the Japanese out.
Unfortunately much damage has been done by this Admin in not stomping on this in the very beginning and letting this come out in the open along with the rest of what has been relayed about the past and present “lease negotiations”
This type of problems will be ever increasing as the early leases come to the end. These lessee’s will be more and more at the mercy of whom ever is in political power along with whom ever has the bucks to “influence” lease renewals and appropriating the properties which would be cheaper to take over and renovate instead of building new.
Hopefully the lease laws will be changed to either outright sales or leasehold up to 99 years as is done in other areas. Many places the 99 year lease was done specifically due to this same problem. Also allow the Lessee to actually own the buildings and sell them to any new lessee. (as is done elsewhere)
Why should anyone of these present lease holders keep up or invest anymore into their lease hold properties when the lease is almost up and any renewal is uncertain and the structures will go with the land
The recovery time of invest is taken into consideration even with the present time allowed so why invest much when there is only 20 years left?
“IF Inos does NOT get elected, this controversy will be mute anyway as Pete will be out also and I doubt that ANY of the others running would allow the Chinese to chase the Japanese out.” That is why they are working so feverishly to get the deals done NOW. Get-r-done and get-ur-cut while the gettin’s good!