Commonwealth Ports Authority board member, right, speaks as fellow board member Thomas P. Villagomez listens during a CPA board meeting on Thursday last week in the Port of Saipan conference room.
Echo Dock in Lower Base.
TWO investors interested in reconstructing and operating Echo Dock in Lower Base are still waiting to hear from the Commonwealth Ports Authority which has yet to decide on their proposals, CPA board member Pete P. Reyes said on Thursday.
“I’m sorry I cannot hide my disappointment. There are several things that we need to move on, [but] it’s like we don’t need the money, when we really need money,” said Reyes who chairs the CPA board’s seaport committee.
He said Echo Dock has been sitting idle for years and leasing it to an investor has been the plan since he was appointed to the board about six years ago. But “we are still talking about clarifying documents and we still have not selected” an investor, he added.
He said the interested investors may back out.
“Do we still have the investors? They have not run away yet?” he asked CPA Executive Director Chris Tenorio.
Tenorio said no. He reported that CPA conducted an evaluation of the proposals from two interested investors on Dec. 19, 2022, and that the evaluation committee met on Jan. 30, 2023, and determined that it needed further clarification. The committee then met again on Feb. 14, 2023, to review supplemental information and documents.
For their part, the investors requested an extension of the deadline to submit documents which Tenorio approved “in the best interest of the CNMI.”
Tenorio said the evaluation committee also wants the investors to present their proposals in the week beginning March 13.
It was also decided, that “we need to get one evaluator from outside CPA, from a private firm,” Tenorio added.
Reyes asked, “Why does it have to be that long?”
He added, “I would think that when the evaluation is done you just look at the proposals, and the best proposal would be the top choice…. I don’t understand why it is taking so long,” Reyes said, adding that such delays are happening “all over the government. You know, the issuance of permit applications…takes forever. The one-hour time to review and approve takes months. We need to be more pro-active.”
Reyes said after the March 13 presentation, he will ask his fellow board members to schedule a meeting on March 14 so they can decide on the proposals.
“If any of the investors runs away, I’m going to point fingers for lack of effort to make this happen,” he said.
“We have a beautiful site out there waiting for CPA [action] to earn money. [But] it’s not earning money because we cannot make up our minds,” he added.
Variety learned that one of the investors plans to invest $1 million in reconstructing and operating Echo Dock for tourist-oriented business activities.
