There appears to be no-takers for the Northern Marianas College\u2019s wish for a public-private partnership to build a new student center and student residence hall. With these partnerships, private companies would build on NMC land without charge or rent; in return they would finance, construct, and maintain these buildings.<\/p>\n
The request-for-interest for these partnerships were issued in September. While some companies have picked up a package, \u201cno one submitted anything,\u201d according to NMC chief financial officer Tracy Guerrero.<\/p>\n
She said costs for advertising in the newspapers would have to be factored in a re-announcement. NMC\u2019s procurement office would not comment and college president Dr. Sharon Hart could not be reached as of press time.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Board of Regents member William Torres, who chairs the fiscal committee on facilities, said the lack of takers was \u201cexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe created our own problem when we did not invite private businesses, vendors, or developers to ask questions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He believes there is interest on island but that companies may have been left \u201cuncertain\u201d with submitting packages.<\/p>\n
He believes companies should have been briefed. He said the requests would be re-issued but this time with one addition\u2014making sure the process is explained to developers, investors, and businesses.<\/p>\n
He said this kind of partnership is \u201cnothing new.\u201d He pointed to hotels on island and their relationship with the Department of Public Lands as successful models for private-public partnerships<\/p>\n
These private developers would be asked to invest long-term in NMC for about 25 to 30 years, he said, essentially \u201crent-free.\u201d<\/p>\n
NMC right now has over 20 hectares of land, he said. NMC could also acquire surrounding properties it if deems it proper.<\/p>\n
He said Plumeria Hotel had been considered in the past but struck down due to a \u201cmultiple-ownership\u201d issue. He said there are other local providers interested in building off campus.<\/p>\n
In the next facility committee meeting, he said they would be discussing the RFI. He said the subcommittee would recommend to the board to re-issue the RFI.<\/p>\n
This time, Torres aims to have a further reach. He said they might publish the RFI this time not just locally but regionally and nationally. He said it is important to \u201cgo beyond the local market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There appears to be no-takers for the Northern Marianas College\u2019s wish for a public-private partnership…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[69,938],"class_list":["post-185276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-nmc","tag-sharon-hart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185276","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}