New Vision for 865 Gartshore | SPUR Innovation Centre

The ecological data centre: living vertical gardens grown right alongside the compute, fed by the heat the racks give off. The same kilowatt trains the AI and grows the food.

This land was always heavy industry. We are making it a better neighbour.

Concern about new data centres springing up on green fields or next to homes is fair. That is not what this is. 865 Gartshore is a former Wolverine Tube copper-tubing plant - an aging heavy-industrial site that already carried the power, the water use, and the industrial zoning of exactly this kind of building. It then sat empty. SPUR is reusing it, and using it far more cleanly than the plant that came before.

Then - the copper tubing plant

Heavy-industrial by every measure

High-heat metal furnaces running around the clock
Roughly 25 MW of installed electrical service
Large industrial process-water draw and discharge
Heavy truck traffic hauling raw metal and finished tube
Left in poor environmental condition - heavy metals and PCBs on site
Then closed: years of break-ins, vandalism, and copper theft at a vacant, deteriorating shell

Now - SPUR's ecological campus

Cleaned up, greened, and given back

Environmental cleanup and remediation - a vibrant green campus, not a contaminated eyesore
No furnaces, no smokestack - quiet, sealed data halls
Efficient air and convection cooling with intelligent, natural design - no evaporative water loss; any liquid cooling or on-site pond runs closed-loop; on-site solar and battery storage
Waste heat recovered, where feasible, to help heat greenhouses rather than vented away
Recreation and resources for local youth - climbing gym, padel courts, and maker space in the innovation centre
A safe, active, welcoming site instead of a magnet for break-ins

The grid capacity, the water infrastructure, and the industrial zoning were built for this land long ago - SPUR is not adding a new industrial burden to Fergus. We are cleaning up a contaminated site that has sat vacant for years, repeatedly broken into and stripped for copper, and turning it into something safe and green: environmental remediation, local food, high-tech jobs, and real recreation and resources for the community's youth where there is now only a fenced-off hazard.

Inside the vacant former copper-tubing plant: an empty deteriorating industrial hall with steel trusses and abandoned machinery — The site today - the vacant, deteriorating shell of the former copper-tubing plant: empty, contaminated, and repeatedly broken into.

A bright hi-tech greenhouse with rows of leafy crops and automated growing systems — The cleaner use that replaces it - hi-tech greenhouses and vertical growing that can use the data centre's recovered waste heat, on the same industrial footprint that once ran metal furnaces.

Far more than a data centre - and far more jobs.

A standalone data centre is mostly an empty room of machines with a small operations crew. That is the version of "data centre" people rightly worry about. SPUR builds something different on purpose: compute is the anchor, but the campus around it - agriculture, an innovation centre, education, and the companies it grows - is where most of the jobs and the lasting community value come from.

A cold grey industrial data centre with exhaust stacks, chain-link fence and an empty asphalt lot

A typical standalone data centre

Same power footprint, conventional model

Constructiontemporary

Permanent ops~20-40

Agriculture0

Innovation0

Companies grown0

A vibrant green ecological innovation campus with solar roofs, greenhouses, gardens and people

SPUR Gartshore campus

Compute + farm + innovation centre, all on one site

Constructionhundreds

Permanent opsDC crew

Agriculture+ growers

Innovation+ programs

Companies grownmany

Three layers of employment: trades and construction through every build phase; permanent roles across data-centre operations, greenhouse and vertical-farm agriculture, and campus services; and the downstream jobs of the startups and companies built on the campus through SPUR's venture studio, hackathons, and scholarship pipeline. That is how one site becomes an engine for the whole township, not a fenced-off box. (Headcounts shown are illustrative ranges; a detailed employment plan accompanies the formal application.)

A team collaborating in the on-site innovation centre — The innovation centre: founders, engineers, and students working on-site - jobs a standalone data centre never creates.

Workers tending rows of crops in a bright greenhouse at golden hour — The vertical farm and greenhouses: year-round growing jobs, using the data centre's recovered waste heat.

What Fergus gets.

The campus is designed to give back to the community it sits in - not just tolerate it.

Local residents shopping for fresh produce at a market inside the campus greenhouse at sunset — Fresh local food grown on-site, year round - and a campus the community actually comes to.

Fresh greens and produce growing in the on-site greenhouse and vertical farm

Year-round local food

Greenhouses and vertical-farm towers, warmed in part by the data centre's recovered waste heat, grow leafy greens, herbs, and mushrooms through the Ontario winter, for local schools, restaurants, and food-bank partners.

Students learning AI in a bright classroom at the innovation centre

Free AI education

Public workshops, student programs, and scholarships run out of the on-site innovation centre - putting Fergus students and workers at the front of the AI economy, not behind it.

Skilled data-centre technicians and greenhouse growers at the campus

Skilled local jobs

Construction trades, data-centre technicians, greenhouse growers, and program staff - plus the founders and companies who set up on the campus and hire here.

Workers remediating the former industrial site into clean green landscape

Brownfield cleanup

An aging, vacant heavy-industrial site is remediated and modernized rather than left to decay - restoring the parcel and the on-site pond as clean, working landscape.

Canadian flag in front of a modern sovereign data centre

Canadian and sovereign

Canadian-owned and operated, with data processed and stored in Canada - aligned with the national sovereign-AI-compute strategy, run from Centre Wellington.

Aerial of the revitalized industrial campus bringing local investment

Tax base and investment

Private capital brought into a stranded industrial property, returning it to the municipal assessment roll and the local economy.

The fair questions, answered.

We have seen the concerns raised about data centres across Ontario. Here is how this specific project is designed to address each one.

A community open house where local residents talk with SPUR staff about the campus plans — We want to answer questions in person - an open, transparent conversation with the community of Centre Wellington.

Q"Will it strain the power grid?"

This site was already engineered for roughly 25 MW as a copper plant. We are reusing that industrial envelope, filing a formal utility load application with Centre Wellington Hydro for Phase 1 (10 MW), and adding on-site solar and battery storage. We are re-occupying capacity the community already built for this land - not competing with homes for new supply.

Q"Will it drain or pollute local water?"

The old plant drew and discharged heavy industrial process water. SPUR is designed around efficient air and convection cooling with intelligent, natural design, and we do not use evaporative cooling - so we are not consuming water to shed heat the way many data centres do. If any liquid cooling or the existing on-site pond is used, it runs as a closed loop. We plan to capture rainwater for supplemental non-potable use, and any water returned to the environment is treated to standard. The net water story is cleaner than the plant it replaces.

Q"Data centres are loud, hot, and employ almost no one."

A standalone one can be. This is the opposite by design: no furnaces or smokestack, waste heat recovered where feasible to help heat greenhouses instead of vented, and an innovation-centre-plus-agriculture campus that employs several times the headcount of a conventional facility this size.

Q"Why not just ban them until we have rules?"

We support Centre Wellington writing clear, modern rules for this industry, and we want to help shape them. But a blanket township-wide ban would also freeze a brownfield cleanup and jobs project on land that is already zoned and built for heavy industry. Good rules can welcome responsible reuse like this while still guarding against the developments residents are worried about. We would rather be at the table than shut out by a freeze that catches the good with the bad.

The site, in plain facts.

Aerial photo of the real 865 Gartshore parcel: the industrial building, the round cooling pond, open fields and surrounding town — The real 25-acre parcel today - the existing industrial building, the on-site cooling pond, and open land for the campus.

Location	865 Gartshore Street, Fergus, Ontario (Township of Centre Wellington)
History	Former Wolverine Tube copper-tubing plant; heavy-industrial use, then vacant
Land / building	25 acres with a ~165,000 sq ft industrial shell (three clear-height zones: 35 / 45 / 85 ft)
Zoning	M2 (General Industrial) - already in place
Power	Dual 44 kV feeders (Centre Wellington Hydro, from Hydro One Fergus TS); 10 MW available now on existing utility service for Phase 1.
Water / cooling	Efficient air / convection cooling with intelligent, natural design; no evaporative cooling; any liquid cooling or on-site pond runs closed-loop; supplemental rainwater capture; any river-return treated to standard
What we build	Sovereign AI data halls + greenhouses and vertical farm (using recovered waste heat where feasible) + on-site innovation centre
Operator	SPUR Innovation Centre - Canadian-owned; also operates the former BlackBerry HQ innovation campus in Waterloo and live Canadian AI compute

A new vision for 865 Gartshore.