CIMAT Considers Three Coast Marinas
By Ralph Nicholson, the beachtimes.com

Flamingo, Coco and Papagayo all on Drawing Board

The government department charged with overseeing all technical aspects of marinas and their construction said this week it was currently considering submissions for 16 marinas around the country, three of them in Guanacaste.

Oscar Villalobos Charpentier, Technical Secretary of the Comisión Interinstitucional de Marinas y Atracaderos Turísticos (or CIMAT), confirmed his department was evaluating bids for concessions in Playa Flamingo, Playas del Coco and the Gulf of Papagayo.

The Guanacaste bids, at least nine of them for the three marina concessions, come as both local and state authorities try to streamline and speed up the process for adjudicating the applications.

In San José, the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT), which includes CIMAT, as well as the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT) and the Ministry of the Presidency, are all poised to sign new draft legislation which would radically simplify the adjudication process.

"There was one last modification which was seen by the board of directors at a meeting last Tuesday, and that's when this week it was sent to the legal counsel of each ministry," said Mr Villalobos. "Everyone is in accordance, but it just needs signatures by the ministers and the president."

Under the reforms, for example, the environmental impact study required of all bidders, will now have to be submitted after the bid has been won. In other words, only one study will be required, saving the unsuccessful bidders tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

Further, CIMAT will now be able to categorize marinas according to size, location and type, so not all bidders will have to meet the same long list of complicated requirements governing such things as fire and safety equipment, parking, insurance, security, rubbish collection, waste water treatment and communications.

And, the new law expands the length of marina concessions from 20 years to 35 years, to give successful bidders a better chance of recovering their investment.

Meanwhile, back in Guanacaste, the Municipality of Santa Cruz announced it will employ additional legal counsel, expert in the 1998 Law of Marinas, to help it award the concession to one of six national and international consortiums bidding to develop and operate the marina in Playa Flamingo.

"At the municipal level we need someone to guide us and prevent us from making mistakes," said the Mayor of the Municipality of Santa Cruz, Pastor Gomez. "We want the terms of reference for the adjudication to be clear, and we have advertised for a specialist in public law and one who knows about the laws of marina."

The Municipality is understood to be considering six resumes from potential candidates. The Mayor along with the council�s Commission on Marinas will make the final decision.

Part of the problem is that the Law of Marinas doesn't establish procedures when there is more than one person bidding for a concession. And, while not openly saying it, the Municipality is anxious to avoid, or at least be prepared for, any appeals that may follow the concession process in such a strongly contested competition.

"This is so the Municipality has counsel who can establish legally the procedures to follow, then they can also have the capacity to resolve appeals quickly" Mr Villalobos said.

The appointment comes after a meeting, now more than 12 months ago, when bidders for the Flamingo Marina heavily criticized the Municipality for issuing no guidelines for the adjudication process.

More recently bidders have been angered by their inability to get hold of copies of the Plan Maestro (Master Plan), which shows precisely the land that will be available to a successful bidder.

"The master plan is a public document and everyone has access to it," said Mr Villalobos. "However, it is not really convenient for copies of documents that have not yet been approved, to be circulating. It is just going to cause confusion."

That is unlikely to be a problem in the Gulf of Papagayo, where Marina Papagayo S.A., is the only applicant, seeking to build a facility alongside the Peninsula Papagayo golf course and resort project.

�They almost have the approval from CIMAT for their pre-project (or draft),� said Mr Villalobos. �It just needs a couple of documents, including the environmental impact study and another concerning access to the marina.�

"We expect to be able to provide the environmental impact study within the next couple of weeks," said Roberto Kopper, of Marina Papagayo S.A. "After that we would expect the approval process to take no less than three months."

Approval for the Papagayo marina is likely to be faster than most. They are the only applicants for concession land controlled by the Institute of Tourism, in other words the process does not have to go through a local Municipality. And of course the Costa Rican government has been a big supporter of the Peninsula Papagayo project.

Mr Kopper said he expected to break ground by September this year.
Two consortiums have draft proposals before CIMAT to operate marinas in the area known as Playa Blanca, in Playas del Coco.

"The applicants in Playas del Coco both chose the best protected area," said Mr Villalobos, "and the municipality of Carrillo will have to make a decision between the two."

In fact one of the applicants said this week they were ignoring the Municipality, and would continue to do so for at least eight months.

Rafael Villegas, president of The Asociación de Marinas de Playas del Coco, or ASODEMAC, made up of about 15 local business people, says it has spent nearly half a million dollars over the past five years developing a plan for a marina.

In August last year they took their case to the Sala IV, or Constitutional Court, to try to get the Municipality to give them a yes or a no answer to their request for a concession.

"At this point we are doing nothing with the municipality," Mr Villegas said. "What we are asking for at this stage is the concession on the water areas, plus the concession for the beach to the 50-meter line. This is controlled by the ICT (Tourism Institute) not by the Municipality."

Mr Villegas said the consortium had completed ocean floor studies, wind and wave motion studies, and a socio-economic study. Their paperwork had been submitted about two weeks ago.

"We will wait until CIMAT checks our paperwork, we expect they will want to make changes," he said. "Then we will deal with the environmental impact study.

"We believe ther is another eight months for us to get everything approved."

Specifically, they are looking for about 25 hectares of ocean (about 60 acres) in the southwest corner of Playas del Coco to accommodate the facility. Originally they had sought an additional 16 hectares (about 40 acres) of beachfront land. Mr Villegas said for the time being they would make do with five hectares of titled land, purchased by one of the consortium, adjacent to where they wish to build.