SECRETARY of Finance David DLG Atalig said it could take years before the construction of the CNMI Economic Resiliency Center will be completed.
The center is expected to be a “one-stop shop” for all business processing in the government, consolidating all Department of Finance offices in one building, other than the Division of Customs Services which will remain at the ports.
The building is anticipated to be around 36,000 to 40,000 square feet, possibly four stories high, fully concrete, equipped with resilient mechanisms, such as a reserve water tank and backup power source that will fully secure the data center and get it up and running to do government business in case of a disaster.
“We are hoping in the next couple of weeks to have our conceptual floor plan designs done,” Atalig said.
He noted that a request for proposals was issued a couple months ago, and an architecture and engineering firm has been hired to work on the designs and plans for the center.
“We anticipate to have all that work done by August or September, and shortly come out with a bid for construction. We’re really working on a quick timeline because we need this building to house our ‘one-stop shop’ for business processing in our government. We’re excited about it. We should have more information in a month’s time, in terms of what the building will…look like,” Atalig added.
The Department of Finance will soon receive an artist’s depiction of the building, and will have more information to share.
The center will be built near the Capital Hill softball field, the Homeland Security and Procurement buildings. The Department of Finance is temporarily located at the Horiguchi Building in Garapan.
According to the Torres-Palacios administration, this project is funded by the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019 or U.S. P.L. 116-20, which provided the U.S. Department of Commerce–Economic Development Administration with $600 million in additional Economic Adjustment Assistance Program funds for disaster relief and recovery for areas affected by Hurricanes Florence, Michael, and Lane, Typhoons Yutu and Mangkhut, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and other major natural disasters occurring in calendar year 2018, and tornadoes and floods occurring in calendar year 2019, under the Robert T. Stafford Act.
The construction of the CNMI Economic Resiliency Center on Capital Hill is expected to cost $14 million.
The project has received from EDA a competitive grant award of $19.6 million, making it one of the largest economic development grant awards to a state or territory in the history of the U.S. Department of Commerce bureau charged to lead the federal economic development agenda.
Of the grant amount, $5.6 million will go toward the technology and security of the data center.
