The Zoning Board approved Thursday last week a conditional use application by Big Boys Marine Sports for a vehicle and repair maintenance and paint and auto body shop.<\/p>\n
Big Boys is currently renting the property on Chalan Monsignor Guerrero Avenue as a commercial garage, owned by Masanari Yasuda, and is proposing it to be changed to a repair shop.<\/p>\n
Marlon Castro, who supports the project, said he has known Yasuda for almost 20 years and has been his long time friend.<\/p>\n
Castro said he feels that Yasuda should be issued the permit once all concerns on environmental issues are addressed in an \u201corderly fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Felipe Atalig, who earlier opposed Diamond Water\u2019s application to move to Gualo Rai, expressed support for Yasuda\u2019s project this time.<\/p>\n
Marizel Hiponia, who was representing her family, opposed the application\u2019s approval due to Big Boys not having a sublease contract with her family.<\/p>\n
Hiponia also noted that the area isn\u2019t large and that traffic and environmental issues could cause problems for the neighbors and an apartment complex located nearby.<\/p>\n
Hiponia said the lease agreement between her family and Big Boys has not been resolved yet, and that they have no capacity to do anything on the property.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey do not yet have a valid sublease agreement for the property so providing approval to Big Boy would be illegal,\u201d Hiponia told Zoning board.<\/p>\n
Zoning\u2019s legal counsel Kate Fuller told the Zoning board that they don\u2019t really have the expertise to interpret people\u2019s leases. <\/p>\n
Board chair Diego Blanco said he only wants clarity on the lease agreement.<\/p>\n
Zoning Board member Herman Sablan asked Yasuda if he has a valid lease agreement. Yasuda confirmed that it had been signed and noted that the commercial garage was dirty and broken and that he had fixed it.<\/p>\n
Atalig said they had covered the shop to prevent fumes from escaping and have a machine that prevents the fumes from leaving the garage.<\/p>\n
Hiponia noted that broken areas of the shop still cause the fumes to escape the area. A neighbor of Hiponia spoke about fumes and its harm to his children and of cars coming in and out.<\/p>\n
After deliberations, Zoning\u2019s administrator Therese Ogumoro added one more condition to the original nine conditions for the permit\u2014that the applicant must obtain a permit from the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality to address concerns on the fumes prior to beginning their operation and ensure that fumes are controlled.<\/p>\n
After the approval, Yasuda told Saipan Tribune that he was happy they approved his application.<\/p>\n
Hiponia stated that she will talk with her lawyer on the issues and further actions that they may take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Zoning Board approved Thursday last week a conditional use application by Big Boys Marine…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[197,38],"class_list":["post-41692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-gualo-rai","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41692","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}