Department of Public Lands Secretary Pete A. Tenorio finally broke his silence on Best Sunshine Inc. allegedly eyeing the public land currently being leased by Marianas Resort & Spa Saipan in Marpi.<\/p>\n
In an interview following the Senate and House of Representatives\u2019 approval of Alter City and Public Lands\u2019 land lease deal Friday at the House Chamber, Tenorio said his agency is not offering Kan Pacific Saipan Ltd.\u2019s expiring land lease to the Hong Kong-based investor of the $7.1-billion integrated casino investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the Kan Pacific lease that\u2019s being made available,\u201d emphasized Tenorio. \u201cOther people are kind of juggling around information which is not accurate and I want to be absolutely clear that it\u2019s not the existing Kan Pacific lease that is being looked at for purposes of providing [Best Sunshine] a lease for their immediate project.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said the public land being offered to Best Sunshine are other portions of Marpi, including the public land that was previously assigned to Sunshine 100 and later to E Land. \u201cIt\u2019s a combination of 20 hectares or so altogether and that could get them started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of the size of Best Sunshine\u2019s investment, Tenorio said that DPL and Best Sunshine are looking at a myriad of areas where public land is available on Saipan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been conducting an ongoing discussion on a number of issues involving public land lease. We\u2019re looking at the Garapan area, for example, like the one right by DFS [T Galleria]. That would be an easy one to handle because that doesn\u2019t have to be referred for legislative approval anymore because it\u2019s less than 4 hectares. I\u2019m not saying we don\u2019t have to share our concerns with the Legislature, but nevertheless the land is so small that once we execute the lease they can go forth with the project,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
When asked about the status of negotiations between Kan Pacific and Public Lands with regards to the extension of the former\u2019s land lease, the Public Lands secretary remained noncommittal on the issue. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s separate issue that\u2019s three years from now. Something\u2019s coming up and I\u2019m not prepared to address that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mariana Resort is pursuing at least a $30-million added investment for a 25-year renewal of its public land lease that\u2019s expiring in April 2018. Part of that additional investment is the addition of 100 executive rooms. Currently, Mariana Resort has 74 hotel rooms and 50 individual cottages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Department of Public Lands Secretary Pete A. Tenorio finally broke his silence on Best Sunshine…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1287,988,256,368],"class_list":["post-183673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-alter-city","tag-best-sunshine","tag-casino","tag-mariana-resort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183673","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}