‘CNMI needs to market itself to the US military’

Although the CNMI is almost assured of benefiting from the upcoming relocation of U.S. Marines from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam, it is important that the Northern Marianas beef up its marketing efforts to attract the military group.

“If we can market the Northern Marianas to the incoming military as a place to go to enjoy, it’s a wonderful thing to do,” said Lee P. Webber, Pacific Daily News publisher and Guam Chamber of Commerce Armed Forces Committee immediate past chairman.

Webber, who spoke during the monthly Saipan Chamber of Commerce meeting on May 3, said Saipan would not be in competition with Guam “because you’d be marketing to the military who live on Guam.”

“They will travel and we have no control over that. I just assume [that they will] travel to the CNMI as they travel to somewhere else. If you think about it, the Philippines is off-limit. Bali is off-limit to active duty military personnel. So while their families could go, they couldn’t go. But the CNMI is a lovely place and they can come here,” said Webber.

He said recent accounts showed that the military will conduct a lot of training “on Tinian and beyond.”

“There are areas where they can train but they have limitations. I know they have a large place on Tinian and other points in Micronesia. A lot of areas. That includes Saipan. I honestly believe that Saipan stands to gain substantially from an economic standpoint in all of these movements,” said Webber.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, who met with the U.S. military officials in Guam last week, said he was assured about Tinian’s use as a training site for the Marines.

The entire relocation project, involving some 8,000 personnel, will cost $10 billion over a five-year period, beginning possibly in 2007 at the earliest.

Earlier, a representative from the Tinian Mayor’s Office said that some 1,000-strong 31st Marine Expeditionary Force and other military personnel from Okinawa would be relocated to Tinian beginning in January next year.

The military controls some 17,799 acres of public land on Tinian, which it leased from the CNMI government. The federal government paid a total of $19.52 million for a 50-year lease of the CNMI public lands until 2028.

The lease also covers 177 acres of public land in Tanapag Harbor on Saipan and the entire Farallon de Mendinilla, which has an approximate area of 206 acres.

In 1994, the Commonwealth and the U.S. Department of Defense signed a leaseback agreement so the Tinian government could use a portion of the public lands leased to the military. The leaseback agreement has since been amended, leaving only about 5,800 acres of land located in the middle of the Tinian covered by the agreement.

Currently, the U.S. and CNMI governments are negotiating on possible amendments to the leaseback agreements to allow the use of leaseback property not only for agricultural but also commercial purposes.

Tinian had been most useful to the military during World War II for the launching of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.