{"id":54530,"date":"2000-11-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-11-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9654b916-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"2000-11-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-11-09T00:00:00","slug":"9654b926-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/9654b926-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"Business owners raise concerns on street market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Marianas Visitors Authority will meet with the Street Market Committee and different government agencies involved in the project to decide on the fate of the weekly street market activity.<\/p>\n<p>MVA is funding the project until December 31 and it is uncertain whether it will continue providing financial assistance since it has been losing money since November 1999.<\/p>\n<p>The evaluation of the street market would also take into consideration the complaints of owners of establishments and residents in Garapan on the  alleged negative effects of the street market.<\/p>\n<p>During a meeting with the police yesterday, some owners of  establishments and residents complained about the garbage left behind during the evening.  Parking, too, has become a problem as cars blocked people&#8217;s driveway.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The idea behind the street market is to lure tourists and the community go gather in a certain place. But if  it is not working and some people are not  happy about it maybe, we have to go back to the drawing board,&#8221; said MVA Board Chair David M. Sablan.<\/p>\n<p>MVA is already looking at the vacant space adjacent to the museum as an alternative area for the street market. Permanent huts will be built for the  concessionaires.<\/p>\n<p>The tourism agency provides $2,500 in weekly funding to the street market but it is only earning $1,000 from payment of concessionaires.  &#8220;We are looking at how to make it a better tourist attraction  but we have to do a lot of changes should we decide to continue this,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>With the planned Garapan Revitalization Project, officials are looking at improving the island&#8217;s tourist district and the American Memorial Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Marianas Visitors Authority will meet with the Street Market Committee and different government agencies involved in the project to decide on the fate of the weekly street market activity.<\/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-54530","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\/54530","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=54530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}