Spur outlines vision for Fergus data centre at town hall
Waterloo town hall attendees press for answers about plans for 10-megawatt data centre
WATERLOO – Spur Innovation pitched a proposed Fergus data centre as a benefit for the community, saying nearby residents wouldn't hear it running.
Locals travelled to the company’s Spur Innovation Centre campus in Waterloo on Sept. 19 to tour a five-megawatt (MW) server room and question company officials ahead of a Sept. 28 delegation to Centre Wellington council.
Spur CEO Sharif Virani reiterated the company has no formal plan filed with the township.
Much of the meeting focused on concerns about the size of the facility and potential for noise.
“It’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of my life and everyone else here that are going to stay in Fergus – it never goes away,” a woman said.
Jordan Snobelen
Spur officials told the room a 10MW first-phase would be built over a five-year period and be barely audible outside the building.
Cooling would be done indoors with air, an abrupt shift from the company’s earlier public statements that the centre would be water cooled.
Within a decade, Spur intends to accommodate a 25MW centre within the current building and could eventually grow to 100MW, which would require additional infrastructure.
Attendees voiced concerns about the effects on property values, who benefits from a data centre, inconsistent information coming from Spur, and a lack of solid information provided in response to questions.
“I do have concerns about the fact that you just don't have the numbers. If you had the numbers, I don't think you'd have near the objection, and I really think you need to do your homework,” a man said.
Virani said he wouldn’t rush concrete numbers just because Centre Wellington councillors rushed a pre-election vote, referring to a one-year moratorium on data centres favoured by township council.
“I’m not going to give you the numbers that are going to fulfill a politician's short little window before the [Sept. 28 council meeting],” Virani said.
Joanne Shuttleworth
Virani said a delegate to council had spread misinformation, and Spur wanted the opportunity to hear the community’s concerns and speak on record at council.
Virani also called out an error appearing in two earlier Advertiser stories that incorrectly identified Spur's ownership. Kapley Judge is the director of Spur Innovation. Krishan Judge owns the 865 Gartshore Street property.
However, Virani did not clarify who comprises the company’s leadership or who owns it.
In a Sept. 28 email to the Advertiser, Virani wrote he is “not the right person to characterize its shareholding, its corporate hierarchy, or the roles of individuals connected to it.”
“We’re not revealing that structure at this time,” he said when reached by phone the same day.
Virani said he’s taking heat as the public face for the project while protecting the company’s private organizational structure, at least until the dust settles.
Virani also disputed that Spur uses Chinese and Indian software, a statement that someone at the meeting incorrectly attributed to the Advertiser.
“We create our own Canadian software,” he told the town hall, calling Kimi and Qwen open-weight models rather than software.
He confirmed during the town hall the company uses the models, saying where they were created is irrelevant because the models run on Spur’s local hardware.
Open-weight AI models are files downloadable by anyone to use and run on owned hardware — nothing is sent back to the developer of the model. Spur Innovation maintains the data it handles stays in Canada on its own infrastructure.
In an email to the Advertiser, Virani retracted his public statement about the newspaper’s reporting on the models, writing: “I answered the assertion in front of me rather than the published text, and I criticized the accuracy of your reporting on the strength of it. I had not gone back and checked what you had actually written.”
Jordan Snobelen
A man, who only identified himself as a Spur engineer at the town hall, said the company wants to make “something that is good for the community.”
“We’re innovation; data centres don’t create a lot of jobs, but innovation centres do, and that is what we propose,” the man said, in part, adding the plan will “take years” to advance.
“The alternative is that we don't do anything, and we'll leave it the way it is … I mean that's fine for some people, but does that add value to your community?”
Virani declined to identify the man who spoke, only saying he’s a “technical lead or lead engineer.”
