Chamber welcomes Hawaiian Rock, BSI as newest members

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce welcomed two new members at their general monthly meeting at the Pacific Islands Club Saipan yesterday.

Pastor Wayne Gillespie of the CNMI Salvation Army speaks to the business community of how they can help fight hunger on Saipan at the Saipan Chamber of Commerce general meeting yesterday.
(Frauleine S. Villanueva)

Chamber president Alex Sablan introduced Hawaiian Rock Products and Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC, which is doing business on Saipan as Best Sunshine International, Ltd. as their newest members.

Hawaiian Rock, which has been in the island since 1988, enumerated to the business community their products and services.

BSI, on the other hand, assured the business community that they will be “opening soon” and that it will be “spectacular.”

“What I can tell you is, our pictures will show you, it will be spectacular. It will be absolutely spectacular,” BSI chief operating officer Matthew Harkness said.

“It’s a lot of good things that I believe the company I work for is going to be adding to this island,” he added.

Harkness added that they look forward to be part of the business community.

“It’s a wonderful place to be. It’s also looking to be a wonderful place to do business,” Harkness said, “I think we will prove to be very good business partners with you guys as well.”

Planning for BSI
In the Chamber’s newsletter, Sablan reiterated their call for the government to “realistically examine” BSI’s investment in the CNMI.

“In building permit stage today at BECQ there are 1,128 rooms that we know of coming online in the next year and a half, added to our current 2,976 rooms on Saipan. Best Sunshine’s 4,000 rooms and another 1,200 planned in the pipeline is where the CNMI government has derived potentially 9,200 rooms for Saipan alone. This does not count the current permit process of Alter City of 2,500 rooms and 452 rooms that exist on Tinian already,” the newsletter said.

Sablan noted that at the hotel labor requirement of 0.72 employees per room, a need of 6,624 employees will be needed, on top of 3,200 casino employees, for the 9,200 rooms.

He also noted the tourism need that will come out of the developments.

“So the question is: where are we getting the near 1.5 million visitors we’ll need to fill 9,200 rooms at 80 percent occupancy based on an average stay of 3.5 days per tourist?” Sablan asked.

“All we’re asking is to examine this carefully and try and achieve answers so we don’t build a glut of unnecessary rooms but have a successful integrated resort development that has tourists and activities year round for all of us to enjoy,” he added.

Reaching out
One of the guest speakers at the event was Pastor Wayne Gillespie, ministry leader of the CNMI Salvation Army.

Gillespie reached out to the business leaders, telling them of ways they can be partners in helping the community.

One way is for companies to contribute to the organization $2,500 annually.

“It costs us about $50,000 and $100,000 a year to run the soup kitchen,” Gillespie said.

“We’re hoping that a number of companies will step up and partner with us,” he added.

Another way is to open up payroll deductions for employees who want to voluntarily donate to the Salvation Army. Amount of the donation will be entirely up to those who want to give.

“We will be more than happy to meet with you and your payroll department and iron those issues out. For most of the payroll departments, they tell me that all it is is adding a column to the Excel spreadsheet that you use to do your payroll,” Gillespie said.

Aside from soup kitchens, the Salvation Army also provides food assistance and help out during times of emergency and typhoons. They also hold toy drive on Christmas. This year, their theme is FAB! which means “Fill a Bowl” and calls on the community to help fight hunger on the island.