Gateway Casinos and entertainment is disputing the City of Surrey's planning and development report figures on the company's proposed South Surrey Entertainment Complex.
In an email to Peace Arch News from Gateway community liaison Tanya Gabara, she said the company believes maps summarizing support and opposition for project in the report are inaccurate "as they only represent a small subset of the feedback which skewed heavily in favour of opponents of the project."
Of concern, she said, is that none of the feedback about the project collected from the community by Gateway – summarized elsewhere in the report – was included in the mapping.
"We understand the city staff were only able to map responses which provided full civic addresses due to a software limitation," she said.
According to city figures, 5,964 pieces of correspondence to the city that excluded information collected by Gateway showed 3,225 (of which 3,220 provided Surrey civic addresses) opposed to the project, while 1,235 city residents, of which only 635 provided civic addresses, supported the project.
Gabara said, however, that the company's tabulation of results summarized in the report show support and opposition among Surrey residents to be "close to even" with 3,048 in support and 3,433 in opposition.
On Thursday, a Delta company, Tornado Building Maintenance Corporation, emailed reporters with a news release listing 38 businesses that project manager Ana Del Pio said support the Gateway proposal.
"Today’s announcement comes (10 days) after a similar endorsement by the Surrey Board of Trade, the South Surrey and White Rock, and Cloverdale Chambers of Commerce," the news releases notes.