Public Lands Secretary Oscar M. Babauta said yesterday that a Chinese conglomerate will be investing \u201cmore than $100 million\u201d to develop some 1 million square meters of public and private land in Marpi for a combination of resort and retirement homes, a proposal that Rep. Ray Tebuteb (R-Saipan) described as a \u201cbetter\u201d alternative than pushing for casinos on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Babauta said executives from the conglomerate will be on Saipan in two weeks to formally make a presentation of their proposed investments from north of the former The Palms Resort Saipan to north of Marianas Resort & Spa in the San Roque-Marpi area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be a combination of resort and retirement homes, short of a mini-city targeting tourists and high-end retirees as clientele,\u201d Babauta told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Although Babauta had earlier disclosed the investment proposal, this is the first time he gave a ballpark figure of the total investment cost.<\/p>\n
Tebuteb, one of the five House members who voted against the latest bill to legalize casino gambling on Saipan, said the Department of Public Lands\u2019 announcement of a resort-retirement home combo investment is welcome news.<\/p>\n
He said lawmakers and other government officials should support investments like this instead of focusing on Saipan casino legalization, which have been voted down twice during elections, as well as during a Nov. 4 non-binding survey. He said casino is already legal in the CNMI, particularly on Tinian and Rota.<\/p>\n
But Tebuteb said enticing and supporting non-casino investors should also be complemented with revenue-generating bills pending at the House and Senate.<\/p>\n
He said many of these revenue-generating measures are languishing in House committees, including rebate cut, increased \u201csin\u201d taxes, an initiative to reduce the salaries of elected officials during periods of austerity and a review of Article 12.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will not only offset budget shortfall but will also help grow the economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A portion of the area covered by the proposed resort-retirement homes development used to be leased by Flame Sako for an $80-million hotel that was later abandoned. <\/p>\n
A second investor, Leisure Planner, followed with a planned a $120-million hotel but also scrapped the project even before an actual lease agreement was signed and approved by lawmakers. Then came Island Ventures LLC which planned a $60-million, five-star hotel, only to dissolve the corporation later on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Public Lands Secretary Oscar M. Babauta said yesterday that a Chinese conglomerate will be investing \u201cmore than $100 million\u201d to develop some 1 million square meters of public and private land in Marpi for a combination of resort and retirement homes, a proposal that Rep. Ray Tebuteb (R-Saipan) described as a \u201cbetter\u201d alternative than pushing for casinos on Saipan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}