It's been about a month since the Lake Norman Regional Economic Development Corp. (LNREDC) released a series of retail market studies about the shopping trends in the towns of Cornelius, Davidson and Huntersville.

Those reports, conducted in cooperation with ElectriCities of North Carolina, Inc. and initially shared with the Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce as well as each town's staff and elected officials, were designed as retail "leakage" studies to show both the retail dollars lost when residents of northern Mecklenburg travel beyond their burbs' borders to buy stuff, as well as where potential retail surpluses might exist locally.

While a significant amount of data was generated in the 27-page report, when first released it elicited not much more than a collective shoulder shrug from Lake Norman area business and political leaders.

In early October, Cornelius Town Manager Anthony Roberts told the Citizen that none of the town's commissioners pursued discussion of the studies after reviewing them, which is significant in that it was Cornelius officials who had expressed the most concern about retail habits and the empty storefronts dotting the Cornelius retail and commercial landscape. Roberts also said the studies may be instructive as just one of several tools leaders and retailers could use to evaluate the market, but that ultimately he didn't think there would be much to gain by it individually.

Those sentiments were echoed by Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce President Bill Russell, who at the time said he hadn't made any solid conclusions based on the data. Even the study's author, ElectriCities Retail Development Specialist Jim Stella, agreed that the data could be a bit deceptive.

"It's not 100 percent accurate, obviously," Stella said last month, "but we've got to take it for what it's worth. ... It's the general trend of what's happening with retail dollars."

At the time of the studies' release, Stella and the LNREDC offered to provide follow-up information sessions to help local business leaders and stakeholders drill down into the meaning of the reports. The Chamber's Russell called in that marker, and hosted Ellis at a special "Focus Friday" event last week.

Russell says the meeting was encouraging, not only in that there were some new faces sprinkled in among the usual suspects who attend Chamber events, but that further discussion of the market study showed what he saw as a strong sense of community in the region.

"There is a tremendous amount of collaboration within the business community of people supporting each other," Russell says. "We as a community are shopping in our area before we go shopping in other places. There is a natural draw. We like that."

Those sentiments were echoed by Jack Salzman, owner of Lake Norman Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Cornelius and the Chamber's incoming chairman of the board of directors. He agreed with Russell's assessment that the data showed local shoppers and businesses working arm-in-arm, and says Stella's explanation of the data reinforced what he's already suspected about his Lake Norman-area neighbors.

"People who live in Davidson don't do all their shopping exclusively in Davidson, and people who live in Huntersville don't do all their shopping there," Salzman says. "The same goes for Cornelius. I think we're truly a region, and that's what the study told us.

"For us as a community, (the study) was useful to see," Salzman adds. "There's a lot of good data in there."

As far as the sheer volume of retail leakage and surplus data, Salzman is right. But one observer at Friday's discussion questions the quality of it.

Nancy Ridenhour, a business technical analyst who has also had her own consulting business, says she attended the discussion merely as an interested Huntersville resident. The statistics major, who describes herself as "very analytical," says the discussion did confirm some trends of which she was already aware, such as the plethora of restaurants and new car dealerships, but a lack of gas stations in some areas.

But Ridenhour says she thinks one must dig even a little deeper than last week's discussion of the numbers to understand retail trends locally, including income levels as well as the region's aging population.

"You've got to look behind these numbers and start asking a lot of questions," she says. Using the dearth of gas stations as an example, she questions the possible knee-jerk reaction of such an assessment.

"Do you really want a gas station on every corner?" Ridenhour asks. "Because let's face it, if it goes out of business, you've gotta clean that up."

Do your own crunching of the retail leakage numbers by visiting the LNREDC Web site to view the reports at www.lakenormanregion.com.