Bridge Capital, Greenland Group in talks to develop Plumeria hotel

Bridge Capital LLC and China’s second biggest developer, Greenland Group, are finalizing hotel development negotiations for Plumeria Resort this week in China but no contract has been signed as yet.

According to chief executive officer Philip James of Invest CNMI LLC, which is the EB-5 investor program of Bridge Capital LLC, about 60 EB-5 investors are being sought to invest $30 million to redevelop the abandoned Plumeria Resort, with the Geenland Group as the hotel’s operator.

James said he helped set up the EB-5 regional center license for Bridge Capital about 12 months ago and it was approved in October.

“Although [Plumeria Resort] needs a lot of work, the fact that it is a physical building [and] the ability to see the building helps to attract foreign investment. As principals of Bridge Capital, we are quite happy to take something that’s a bit of an eyesore and turn it into something commercially successful and good for the island,” he said.

James, who is based in China at the moment, said most of the investors for the project will come from China and that most of their customers will likely come from China.

He said the EB-5 program will require every investor for this project to employ 10 U.S. citizens as workers “but we haven’t quite gotten into those details.”

Bridge Capital chief operating officer Jody Jordahl, who is also in China with James, was unavailable for comment at the time of the phone interview.

The EB-5 program, under which Bridge Capital plans to renovate the hotel, was created by Congress in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. It is administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The minimum qualifying investment in the United States is $1 million, but in high unemployment areas or rural areas in the U.S., the minimum qualifying investment is $500,000. The investor has to create or preserve at least 10 full-time jobs for qualifying U.S. workers within two years of the immigrant investor’s admission to the U.S. as a conditional permanent resident.

In a statement last week, Bridge Capital said it plans to incorporate new elements into Plumeria Resort, “including a beautiful pool and beach area, numerous restaurants and a beach bar, a relaxing and indulgent spa, and an electronic gaming facility with slot machines.”

“Bridge has seen and experienced first-hand the current shortage of hotel rooms on island. We are confident that redeveloping the Plumeria hotel will help address this critical need as the CNMI economy continues to expand and more and more tourists flock to our island paradise,” the statement adds.

The hotel’s potential operator, the Greenland Group, has been in business for over 20 years in real estate, integrated development of relevant industries. It is based in Shanghai, China.

According to its website, Greenland Group is ranked 268th place in the 2014 Fortune Global 500 and ranked 40th among Chinese mainland enterprises on the list. In 2014, its business operating income amounted to $402 billion yuan or $62.7 billion USD, with a total of pre-tax profits of $24.2 billion yuan or $3.8 billion USD and total assets of $478.4 billion yuan at the year-end, of which the real estate business had a pre-sale area of 21.15 million square meters and a sum of $240 billion yuan or $37.4 billion USD.

http://www.saipantribune.com/index.php/bridge-capital-greenland-group-in-talks-to-develop-plumeria-hotel/

Mentions

• Greenland Group

States

• New York