1st phase of Saipan Garden Resort breaks ground

CNMI dignitaries prepare to break ground during the Saipan Garden Resort groundbreaking ceremony last Monday. (Contributed Photo)

American Sinopan LLC hosted a small groundbreaking ceremony for CNMI officials to thank the government for their acceptance of their resort project.

The company’s construction broke ground Tuesday to begin the earth moving and erosion control part of constructing the Saipan Garden Resort. This part of construction is basically the clearing out of all the debris, plantation, and soil surrounding the area in which the resort will be built on.

According to American Sinopan chief engineer James Bi, there are about 100,000 square meters of land that has to be cleared up. On this 100,000 square meters, American Sinopan will construct 1,184 guestrooms, 170 apartments, and 108 staff apartments. The structure will be compound-like with 14 six-story buildings, three swimming pools, and six restaurants.

“This is actually the second project and we have another project, Heavenly II, on Capitol Hill for renovation,” he said.

Bi said that Sinopan has been preparing for the groundbreaking ceremony of Saipan Garden Resort project for almost a year and they have been waiting anxiously for this moment.

The contractor that Sinopan chose to go with is the Jeung Su Construction Group based off of Saipan. “They have been coming here since last year to prepare for the building of the super structure,” he said.

Although Sinopan went for an off-island contracting company to construct the super structure, Sinopan chose to go with a local contractor for the earth moving and erosion control portion of construction. The contractor group is called Success Construction Group.

“For the earth moving and the erosion control, we choose the local contractor…all together we need 800 workers up to 1,000. Right now because of the policy change, we have around 100 for the foundation and that is OK,” he said.

The American Sinopan Construction Group expects to complete phase 1 of three phases by October 2019.

The completion date for phase 1 is set for October 2019. Phase 1 starts with 500 guestrooms plus 10 apartments. All of them will be six stories high.

Phase 2 will begin in mid-2019 and will be completed by 2020. Phase 2 consists of 700 plus rooms (both apartments and guest rooms).

Phase 3 will be the completion of the administrative office but there is no timeline yet.

American Sinopan Construction Group is also currently looking for local workers to be part of their team. “We are ready to hire workers from Chuuk, Pohnpei, Palau,” said Bi.