business & economy

Bern upset with newspaper coverage
of his hotel and the Cinta Costera
by Eric Jackson, largely from other media

Journalist Mónica Palm, who works for La Prensa, has been doing a series of articles on the Cinta Costera project and meeting a lot of resistance along the way. The project to build a landfill and roadway along the Panama's waterfront is controversial from an increasing number of angles as details emerge.

Minister of Public Works Benjamín Colamarco has been withholding information and lower-down officials telling conflicting stories --- historically a set-up, given that Panamanian journalists have been prosecuted for criminal defamation when they have published wrong information given to them by the government, and maybe even more of a trap since the Cuban-inspired section 254 of the new Penal Code, which provides prison terms for publishing false news that endangers the national economy, recently went into effect.

One bit of information that Palm dug out, and that has made her the target of bitter criticism by hotelier / real estate developer Herman Bern, is by all accounts true. It turns out that the concession for the marina, parking lot and pool at Bern's Hotel Miramar --- which were built on a landfill --- had lapsed. The hotel itself is built on some land that had been in private hands for more than 100 years and was bought by Bern. The Cinta Costera project involves the government taking over the hotel's current marina --- which was a failure largely for its location in an enclosed and polluted area --- and the hotel receiving a concession for a new marina in exchange.

Palm duly reported the expiration of the hotel's concession and Bern cried foul. In full-page ads in some of the daily newspapers, copies of which were emailed to other media (including The Panama News), Bern called Palm a "journalist" in quotation marks and accused her of sullying his name in an attempt to attack the Cinta Costera. He argued that Palm's reports insinuated that the Hotel Miramar exists on illegally obtained land.

But it turns out that the concession had indeed expired toward the end of the Moscoso administration, which dragged its feet on a renewal, and then, Bern claims, the Torrijos administration was set to renew it but put the matter on hold while the details of the Cinta Costera were being sorted out. By all accounts the fees pursuant to the terms of the old concession for the Hotel Miramar have been paid all along.

The details of Bern's concession have been conflated with those of the Club de Yates y Pesca, a quintessentially rabiblanco institution that received a concession from the government for its current premises back in 1958 and neglected to ever pay for it as agreed. (Back then people used to talk about the "government of cousins" and it wasn't too far off the mark for members of the exclusive club to confuse themselves with the nation's public institutions.)

But if Bern's claim to equitable rights to his concession are stronger than the club's, the Cinta Costera plan, which was sold to the public as an expansion of the public park system, will give both the club and the Miramar Hotel larger areas for marina and other concessions than those that are being taken by the government for the project. These concession swaps, defended by Colamarco as necessary to avoid lawsuits, have become a symbol of the double standards of the Torrijos administration.

It seems, however, that the concessions are destined to become a minor footnote in a growing public controversy. Citing a lower-level Ministry of Public Works (MOP) official, Palm reported that more than 70 percent of the cost of the Cinta Costera would be paid by a special assessment charged to people and institutions that own property along Avenida Balboa, Avenida Mexico, Avenida Justo Arosemena and side streets between the latter avenue and the waterfront. According to this initial report, the Club de Yates y Pesca and the Hotel Miramar would not have to pay this special assessment because they are public concessions.

Then came the clarifications. The government said that it wouldn't be only 70 percent, but virtually all of the cost, to be paid by nearby property owners, in an area that includes Punta Patilla, Punta Pacifica and a stretch parallel to the shoreline that extends to Via España rather than Avenida Justo Arosemena. President Torrijos added that, to the extent that the Hotel Miramar and the Club de Yates y Pesca pay property taxes, they will pay higher taxes due to the Cinta Costera's effect on property values.

The Cinta Costera was originally proposed by an American urban planner, as a roadless extension of public green space along the city's polluted waterfront. The Torrijos administration altered the plan as a road project, hyping it as a solution to the capital's traffic problems --- an idea that no independent and reputable urban planning expert has endorsed.

Then came the bidding for the project. After a qualifying process to ensure that only serious and reputable companies could bid, the low bidder was bypassed in favor or Norberto Odebrecht SA, the Panamanian subsidiary of a notorious Brazilian company that acted as clearinghouse in a massive bid-rigging scandal that forced a Brazilian president from office. Who owns a piece of the Panamanian subsidiary? That matter is subject to Panamanian corporate secrecy and Odebrecht's publicist declines to give a forthright denial that President Torrijos's relatives are not among the owners.

Then came the environmental impact statement, which among other defects didn't specify the source of the landfill material. Its acceptance by the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) was taken by environmentalists and urban policy reform advocates as a definitive example of ANAM's desertion from its duties to protect the public interest under the Torrijos administration.

Then came the revelations that it wouldn't be possible for an ordinary citizen to take a walk along the waterfront, at least without large detours around the new private concessions to be given to the Club de Yates y Pesca and the Hotel Miramar. Also, as one might expect, another effect of those revelations is that the owners of competing marinas are annoyed at what appears to them to be government subsidized competition.

But now the government is saying that the Chinese lady who runs the laundromat on a hardscrabble stretch of Via España in Perejil, the bank on Calle 50, the gringo retirees who thought they had a good deal on a condo in Paitilla, the nervous flipper who speculated by a pre-construction purchase in a luxury tower in Punta Pacifica, the Hasidic Jews who live on Calle Har Sinai, the nightclubs on Calle Uruguay and so on will be footing the bill for the Cinta Costera. There's going to be hell to pay for that in an election year, and despite Herman Bern's protests, it won't be Mónica Palm paying the price.