Spur invites residents, critics to data centre town hall

WATERLOO – Spur Innovation, the Waterloo-based tech company behind plans for a Fergus data centre, is hosting a town hall meeting for concerned Centre Wellington residents on Sept. 19.

Spur wants to turn a 25-acre brownfield at 865 Gartshore Street, 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.

"Everyone is welcome, including people who think this is a bad idea – especially them," states Spur's website.

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The town hall is scheduled for 1 to 3:30pm at the Spur Innovation Centre in Waterloo (2240 University Ave. E.), formerly the BlackBerry headquarters, where the company says it's currently building a data centre.

“We are engaging directly with residents and local stakeholders to understand their concerns and, just as importantly, the exact questions they want answered,” Spur CEO Sharif Virani previously told the Advertiser.

A Change.org petition, organized by Carolyn Sharp and demanding action on local data centre development, has grown to more than 2,000 signatures.

“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 previously said, adding the petition is aimed at getting politicians to appreciate the degree of resistance in the community.

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Virani previously said residents “are asking the questions any reasonable person would” while looking out for their community.

Spur's revamped website for the project pitches a former industrial plant turned into community campus built around a data centre, complete with food grown on site year-round and public education workshops.

Residents can RSVP and suggest a question via an online form.

"We'll try to answer as many as we can on the night, and we'll publish the questions and answers on this page beforehand so you can see them either way," states Spur's website.

The company has also opened a dedicated feedback email address, hellofergus@spuric.com, which goes directly to Virani.