New Guam utilities offices to open next month
HAGATNA, Guam—The $30 million, brand-new building for power and water agencies to share customer service and administrative offices will open to the public next month.
The goal is to complete the move to the new facility in Fadian, Mangilao, after the Dec. 8 local holiday, said Art Perez, GPA spokesman.
Harmon office will close
The move means ratepayers will no longer be able to pay their power bills at the Guam Power Authority office in Harmon because that location will close, Perez said.
Northern village residents can pay for power at the Guam Waterworks Authority office in upper Tumon behind GTA, or at the new building in Mangilao.
The waterworks customer service desks in upper Tumon will stay open, but administrative offices will relocate to the new consolidated Gloria B. Nelson Public Service Complex. Nelson was an educator and former utilities commissioner who died of an illness two years ago.
Ratepayers already are paying for the project, which was funded with part of a $155-million bond floated in 2010.
Consolidated Commission on Utilities Chairman Simon Sanchez said the project is an investment for the future of both utility agencies.
Always been renting
The power agency pays more than $720,000 in rent a year at its Harmon location. Guam Waterworks also rents office space at the DNA building in Hagåtña.
Sanchez said the annual repayment cost of the project is close to $1 million a year, and at the end of 30 years, the power and water agencies will own the facility without owing money to bond investors.
The power authority hasn’t had a place of its own and had always been renting, Perez said.
Decades-old idea
The concept to house both agencies in one brand-new building began during the administration of Gov. Joseph Ada more than two decades ago, Perez said.
About 15 acres of raw land that were part of the Guam Ancestral Lands Commission inventory were transferred to the utility agencies to provide it with a location for the building.
About $226,000 has been spent or will be spent on paintings by more than a dozen local artists to give the modern building a Guam sense of place. The new building must feature local artwork as required by Guam law.–Gaynor Dumat-ol Deleno, Pacific Daily News
