Legislature, BPL meet to settle land lease row

Members of the Legislature are set to meet today with the Board of Public Lands to try to settle differences on the plan to grant a 15-year lease extension to the Rota Resort and Country Club.

The crucial meeting will determine whether legislators can go ahead and vote on the lease extension — a move that will help bail out the Japanese-owned resort from its present financial troubles.

According to Sen. Edward U. Maratita, chair of the Rota legislative delegation, he has asked both the House and Senate Resources Committee to discuss the issue with public lands officials to resolve the problems as soon as possible.

“I am encouraging the support of both houses to help Rota because … this is the time that the government should come in and help businesses,” he explained. “Why should we wait for those investors to come in when we know the investors are here who need help?”

SNM Corporation, owner of the resort, has appealed to the Legislature for additional 15 years to its original 25-year lease agreement in a bid to convince financial institutions to infuse more funds into the tourism facility.

But BPL Chairman Tomas B. Aldan has cautioned lawmakers against bypassing the Board on their plan to grant the request, noting the Rota Resort has yet to comply with some conditions stipulated in the initial deal.

“We’re inviting the Board to attend this final meeting in Rota so we can discuss all the issues that need to be ironed out and all the problems that SNM and public lands have regarding the lease provisions,” Maratita said.

The resort apparently has not notified the Board which has to be involved in the request because of some requirements in the lease that SNM needs to fulfill, the senator added.

Under the terms, the resort must build a 200-room hotel which it has yet to meet at this time because of the continuous plunge in tourist arrivals to the CNMI and it will be impossible for the company to undertake this development.

Maratita said they had given two extensions to the resort during the 8th and 10th Legislature “and at that time, they didn’t ask for those all conditions” that SNM should fulfill.

“Why is it now that the public lands is digging into all those provisions,” he asked. “I don’t think any financial institution will loan out money if the lease is too short.”

The senator, however, expressed hope that the meeting will be able to provide solution to the disagreement as the resort is losing between $100,000 to $200,000 every month with the continued tourism downtrend.

“The main office (of SNM) is subsidizing the Rota operations and if this keeps on going, we don’t want to have another major hotel to close down. It’s going to be a major disaster for Rota in terms of employment, revenues for the government,” Maratita said.

“We are chasing investors away. They are saying that we are anti-business and we don’t want to have that image. We would like to show to foreign investors that we mean what we say and we want to help them in any way possible,” he added.