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A Mississauga-based developer that has land in Fort Erie says the property would be an ideal location for a data centre, but the company has no plans to build one.<\/p>\n
On its website, Velocity1 Group says it’s committed to harnessing the rapidly expanding demand for data centres, stating its “vast industrial land holdings in Fort Erie, Ontario, located two minutes from the U.S. border, present an unparalleled opportunity for data centre development,” the company said.<\/p>\n
But when contacted by CBC News, Velocity1 CEO and founder Azhar Mohammad stressed his company has no plans for a data centre in Fort Erie. Rather, it has plans for an “employment land campus” for the 400-acre site adjacent to the QEW.<\/p>\n
“We’re not building a data centre right now. It’s not on our radar,” he said.<\/p>\n
Working with province, local government<\/p>\n
The company said it’s working with the province’s Ministry of Economic Development and local governments as it moves forward with plans for the property, with a focus on manufacturing, logistics and “many other uses” geared towards job creation and economic stimulus.<\/p>\n
Mohammad said his company is bound by non-disclosure agreements with several international companies and is unable to divulge any more information at the moment.<\/p>\n
He said his company does get involved in data centre development in other areas, but “we do not have any plans for any kind of data site in Fort Erie. Full stop.”<\/p>\n
The company said it amassed the land in Fort Erie over 16 years.<\/p>\n
Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop said the town has not received any application or held a pre-consultation meeting regarding a data centre in the town. “I have not had any personal contact regarding such a development,” he said.<\/p>\n
The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has\u00a0accelerated the development<\/a>\u00a0of data centres, which has in turn sparked\u00a0protests across Canada<\/a>, including over the amount of\u00a0water<\/a>\u00a0and energy needed to run these sites. <\/p>\n Velocity1 said the versatility of the Fort Erie land allows for solid state battery manufacturing and related supply chain needs, but said it’s also approved for uses such as major logistics and bonded warehousing, data centres, cold storage and a wide range of applications requiring major renewable energy and water consumption.<\/p>\n CBC News reached out to the Town of Fort Erie to ask what uses are allowed under the current zoning of the land, but has not heard back yet.<\/p>\n In Hamilton, a planning tribunal in June denied a developer’s application to split a plot of land on which the company is considering a data centre. That decision came after hearing from hundreds of people opposed to the proposed data centre. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":["post-227656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}