IPI confident on August 2018 deadline

Monday 11th of December 2017

Imperial Pacific Resort Pacific International chairman Mark Brown says he is confident that the company will meet its August 2018 deadline to complete its Garapan resort, according to a report from Saipan Tribune.

“We are still targeting to open the entire facility in August 2018. Hopefully we can get more U.S. workers here… If we can always continue to move on and hire 2,000 to 4,000 employees with 50 percent U.S.-eligible workers, that’s is a big number. That’s what we are hoping to do,” said Brown on the sidelines of a film festival on Friday.

Brown said IPI needs thousands of construction workers to build the property and will need thousands more workers to run the facilities once the hotel is finished.

“We have 200 workers now—all U.S. construction workers—and we have about 200 more coming, so you will see the progress of the property getting done. I wish we had a thousand workers on the site but…you will see it moving along. You see a panel at a time; it will continue to grow,” he added.

The construction of the resort has been impacted by the cutting of almost 3,000 worker slots from the CW01 program this year - causing a shortage of construction workers.

“As you know, the difficulties that we’ve had so far dealing with CWs are construction workers,” said Brown.

“Our governor right now is in Washington, D.C. helping all of us. Think about it it, we need three, four or five times more people than anybody else on the island. So whatever problem a local restaurant is facing, multiply that by 20, that is our problem,” he said.

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