Pacific Rim eyes 250 Imperial Pacific hotel rooms by August

After months of cutting ties with its former contractor, MCC International, Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC has inked a deal with Pacific Rim Contractors last week to continue construction of the Imperial Pacific Resort in Garapan.

Keith Stewart, president of Guam-based contractor Pacific Rim, said the target right now is to meet the requirements IPI has established with the CNMI government—building 250 rooms at the IPI resort by August.

“Pacific Rim signed a contract last week with IPI so we are looking for talented craftsmen and craftswomen. If you have the talent and we are looking at every trade right now, we have a lot of opportunities,” he said.

“One of these targets is the deadline of August for a certain number of rooms, 250. That’s what we are targeting right now and so we have a lot of work to sort out. We are starting to mobilize, we have 40 people on the ground. Next week, we will probably triple that and keep growing from there,” he added.

In an earlier interview, Eric Poon of IPI said that discussions between Pacific Rim Contractors in Guam and IPI have been ongoing since December 2017.

With the shortage of construction workers on island, Pacific Rim is said to have access to U.S.-eligible workers.

“There’s a number of bumps along the road in various capacities as there would be in any project and workforce is obviously a challenge. We are looking to hire everyone we can possibly hire on Saipan,” Stewart said.

“We will continue to reach out as we will be bringing over craftsmen from Guam and expanding out even in the [U.S.] mainland, as well as H2-Bs. Our company has never hired H2-Bs. As a Guam-based contractor, we’ve only hired local workers, so that’s our first choice,” he added.

H2B are foreign workers with temporary U.S. visa work permits.

As for over the 1,044 H2-Bs that IPI was able to acquire to do construction work early this year that are set to arrive in the coming weeks, Stewart said that they haven’t worked that through with IPI.

“We haven’t worked through that with IPI yet as IPI applied for them before we were involved with the project. We will be working with IPI, though, on how to best utilize the opportunities that are out there,” Stewart said.

“Currently, the priority is to finish the programs in place to go and help grow the workforce,” Stewart added.