Re: Proposed Gateway statistics.
In support of their planned Gateway development, it was reported in the local papers that Omicron quoted that an “estimated” $450 million was spent by peninsula residents outside Sidney, compared with only $126 million spent locally.
These figures were then used to justify adding more shops to Sidney in Gateway. I doubted these figures.
I conducted a brief review of both North Saanich and Sidney residents and found the exact opposite.
Consistently, 79 per cent was spent in local shops and only 21 per cent spent elsewhere.
If readers wish to check for themselves, the method is simple: assemble your credit card statements for several months, deduct irrelevant charges such as phone, internet, car leases, media etc. and then sum the totals spent locally and elsewhere. It will be interesting to compare your results with the figures quoted by Omicron and with the upcoming survey by Urbanics (and paid for by Omicron).
My own review has lead me to be very skeptical of any figures submitted by the developer and the VAA. I hope that Sidney council will be Skeptical, too.
Bryan Holmes, North Saanich
(Editor’s note: while such methods may give readers an idea of their own spending habits, we would not suggest using anecdotal comments as statistical facts.)