Fergus data centre debate grows as Spur powers up public outreach
Waterloo company planning door-to-door visits, public town hall, council appearance
FERGUS – Spur Innovation is kicking off a public relations campaign in earnest this month, insisting a data centre on its Gartshore Street property is the right move.
The Waterloo-based company wants to turn a 25-acre brownfield at 865 Gartshore Street in Fergus, once home to the Wolverine Tube copper tubing plant, into a data centre campus with a potential vertical farm, closed-loop cooling system and battery-based energy storage.
“We are working through what that would actually involve; we are in the planning phase,” Spur Innovation CEO Sharif Virani reiterated in an email to the Advertiser, adding no plans have been filed with Centre Wellington.
Township council implemented a year-long moratorium on data centres on Aug. 24 to ensure policy can keep up with data centres, a new type of industrial use in the municipality.
However, that’s not stopping the company from meeting with the township and knocking on doors.
‘We are engaging directly with residents’
Virani observed the Aug. 24 council meeting in person, and said Spur has offered Centre Wellington information to “make their policy review easier and more accurate,” but has not received a “substantive response” on its offer.
Township spokesperson Kendra Martin said staff are meeting with Spur “from an economic development perspective” to discuss the company’s plans.
In the coming weeks, Spur representatives will visit homes and businesses near the Gartshore brownfield, Virani said.
“Not to persuade anyone, just so that nobody can say we never came."
Jordan Snobelen
The company has opened a dedicated feedback email address, hellofergus@spuric.com, which goes directly to Virani.
The company is also hosting a Sept. 19 town hall at its Waterloo site, the former BlackBerry/RIM Park campus, open to anyone with questions about Spur’s Fergus vision.
“We are engaging directly with residents and local stakeholders to understand their concerns and, just as importantly, the exact questions they want answered,” Virani said.
He also said he has registered to speak at a Sept. 28 council meeting.
‘We are still in the planning phase’
Described as an AI-first company, Spur was founded in 2025 by Krishan (Kapley) Judge, an entrepreneur working in real estate, tech and crypto.
Although Spur doesn’t have a commercially operating data centre, one is being built out at the former Blackberry headquarters, now the Spur Innovation Centre.
According to Virani, Spur runs its own machines in an unfinished facility using freely available Chinese AI models Kimi and Qwen, with free use of Spur’s hardware given to upstarts and students.
Virani, Spur’s public face, previously told the Advertiser the Gartshore property in Fergus, owned by Judge, was being considered for a data centre, but cautioned at the time it was still early days and plans were in an “evaluation stage.”
Jordan Snobelen
“What has changed is the seriousness of the work behind it,” Virani said more recently.
During a Guelph visit last month, Premier Doug Ford announced a so-called data centre playbook (in a public commenting stage until Sept. 12) that would determine which data centre projects get to hook up to the province’s power grid.
Virani said the draft framework “gave the whole sector something to design against,” but said it wasn’t a turning point for Spur’s “conceptual” Fergus plans.
“We are still in the planning phase and we are iterating on it more or less weekly,” Virani said.
‘A lot of us are feeling completely unheard’
As Spur hones its vision, Carolyn Sharp is opposing it.
Sharp’s Change.org petition demanding action on data centre development has grown weekly, approaching nearly 2,000 signatures as of this week.
The petition calls on the township to undertake impact studies, implement policy, guarantee early public consultations, require developers to disclose impacts of the centres, bar shifting costs onto taxpayers, bar NDAs and push for a provincial-federal framework.
“There’s a lot of concern about the impact that these data centres have when they are built in communities close to where people live,” Sharp told the Advertiser by phone.
An Elora resident of 27 years, Sharp described herself as a passionate community member who believes local politicians prioritize developers over residents.
Joanne Shuttleworth
“A lot of us are feeling completely unheard by this current council,” Sharp said, adding her petition is aimed at getting politicians to appreciate the degree of resistance in the community.
“It is election season; at least it’s being talked about,” she added, noting current councillors and council hopefuls have since seized onto the issue.
Concerned residents, Virani said, “are asking the questions any reasonable person would.”
“I do not think anyone opposing this is doing anything other than looking out for the place they live,” he added.
‘All we are asking for is the chance’
Virani argued a local data centre would turn a contaminated industrial site into something usable, drive the larger economy and keep Canada’s data in Canadian hands.
AI requires computing power, or processing muscle, and where that power sits will determine whose economy grows, Virani continued, comparing domestic computing power to shipping Canadian energy around the globe.
“Compute is the same trade in a different form, except this time we can build the facilities here, run them on some of the cleanest and most efficient power on Earth, and serve the rest of the world from Canadian soil rather than renting the capability back from somebody else,” he said.
There are good and bad actors behind data centres, Virani said, echoing comments made by councillor Jennifer Adams at an Aug. 24 meeting.
“All we are asking for is the chance to show which one we are,” he said.
Virani wouldn’t speak to the potential impacts of a data centre, saying it would be premature while the project is still being planned and before he has concrete figures he’s willing to stand behind.
“Water, energy and noise are the three that matter most here and they are the three we are working through now,” Virani said.
