Palacios: Liability is too big for the Commonwealth

Gov. Arnold I. Palacios said the remaining one of two cranes atop the Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC’s unfinished resort/casino project in Garapan needs to be removed immediately as the liability is too big for the Commonwealth.

“We’re not [going to] continue to sit down around and think around these folks anymore. We’ve got to get that thing down,” said Palacios in an interview last week.

The governor underscored the importance of taking down IPI’s tower crane No. 5 in response to Saipan Tribune’s request for comments about the Commonwealth Casino Commission board chair Edward C. DeLeon Guerrero’s request last Sept. 9 to use an unspent $250,000 so CCC could hire an executive director and five other personnel to assist the commission for three months.

Palacios disclosed in the interview that Attorney General Edward Manibusan had advised him to hold on to that money and recommended taking care of IPI’s crane first.

Whether he will use that money to remove the crane or use it for another purpose, Palacios said Manibusan advised him to have that crane taken down—whether the removal is done through the Department of Public Works’ procurement process or IPI doing it themselves.

“But it has to come down,” he said.

As for IPI’s claim that it hired a company to take down the two cranes, the governor doubts whether IPI will indeed do that.

“IPI said a lot of [other] things too. That’s where we’re at,” he said.

Howyo Chi, IPI’s new manager/director, told the casino commissioners during CCC board’s monthly meeting last month that IPI has hired a company that will dismantle crane tower No. 5 and 6 at no cost to DPW or the CNMI government.

Palacios said the CNMI is continually being put in a quandary.

“In the meantime, that thing is deteriorating. God forbid that there be another typhoon or something happens to the crane and somebody gets hurt or people’s properties get damaged. We cannot rest until that thing is down,” he said.

If IPI has a contractor that will do it, then that’s good, Palacios said, but IPI said that about three or four months ago.

Last Oct. 5, DPW Building Safety official Yvonne B. Tenorio issued a notice of actual and immediate danger to IPI, requiring that crane No. 5 be deconstructed/or disassembled as it poses an imminent threat to public safety and properties.

Crane No. 5, which looms over Hibiscus Street between the IPI casino/resort building and Joeten Hafa Adai, has reportedly not been used since December 2020.

Tower crane No. 6 faces the beach.