For years, it remained an inconspicuous building in Scarborough Southwest, attracting little more than a few furrowed eyebrows from passersby.
“We’ve seen that building forever,” local resident Ron Parkinson said about the site that formerly housed Ely Lilly Canada at the corner of Danforth Avenue and Birchmount Road. “And then we see they’re working on it. OK, great … But there was no communication about what it was. And when people asked, nobody knew.”
It was another AI data centre.
During past election cycles, STACK Infrastructure’s data centre at 3650 Danforth Ave., which has been in the works since 2021, was not controversial. The data centre operated at a relatively low capacity, drawing an unalarming amount of power.
In the middle of this year, the site became the centre of mounting public discourse after the developer filed plans to expand the relatively small facility from eight megawatts to 56.
Now — as explosive AI data centre construction is sparking an international debate over the consumption of land, water and electricity — Scarborough Southwest has become part of the political battleground.
“(The project) won’t be stopped,” Parkinson said. “But many people will vote based on how they think the councillor is going to manage the development.”
With the top candidates neck-and-neck in the Ward 20 race, opposition to the data centre has become a key issue, with candidates parading their disdain for the project to court community members seeking someone to blame for the mega development sneaking into their backyard.
“How much electricity? How much water? How much noise? All those things,” Parkinson wondered. “Nobody has come to announce that.”
The issue has been increasingly contentious at various town halls where the developer has been notably absent.
The Star asked STACK in an email to respond to the residents’ concerns, but did not receive a response.
In a letter to city council, STACK argues that the expansion “plays a key role in advancing Canada’s data sovereignty objectives by ensuring that data is stored, processed and protected on Canadian soil.” (Residents, like Parkinson, question if data sovereignty is feasible considering it is an American company.)
While some now blame Coun. Parthi Kandavel, who succeeded former councillor Gary Crawford in 2023, for the project’s progression, Parkinson says he empathizes with local councillors, who are often also kept in the dark about these projects.
“All the councillors in Scarborough would probably say the same thing … ‘I don’t know what it is because I wasn’t privy to the information.’”
In a conversation with the Star, Kandavel said just that.
The incumbent highlighted that the project, like many other data centres popping up across the city, is “as-of-right,” meaning that developers can construct housing or infrastructure without requiring special municipal approvals or zoning amendments, provided the building plans comply with existing local rules.
“As a result, there’s no need for any sort of communication … much less consultation,” Kandavel explained.
Kandavel said his office became aware of the project in June and worked with city staff to understand the implications and approach “especially around environmental impacts.”
“We attempted to work with the applicant,” he said.
In July, after STACK “reneged on an agreed public meeting,” Kandavel says he took a “more adversarial approach,” introducing a motion at council aimed at aligning staff’s site review of the 3650 Danforth Avenue data centre expansion with the city’s broader citywide policy review of major digital infrastructure and AI data centres, which is due in 2027.
“That way we’re not putting the cart before the horse,” Kandavel said. “We need that policy to guide the approval process for this case.”
While this, Kandavel argues, serves as a pause to the development, he admits that staff have to “work with the applicants as their legal obligation is as part of the planning act.” This means STACK’s expansion could still “potentially” move forward before the policy is ready, allowing the project to proceed under the city’s existing rules rather than the upcoming guidelines.
Kandavel says that’s the extent to which he could delay the project.
According to the incumbent, after surveying his colleagues, he found that there was “no appetite” for an interim control bylaw — a temporary measure that would have paused the project until staff had developed such a framework.
“I’m not in the business of doing performative gestures,” he said, adding that he then opted for a less forceful measure — his motion — after lacking sufficient council support for a bylaw.
Kandavel’s fiercest rival, Kevin Rupasinghe, argues that the sitting councillor missed an opportunity to take control of the development’s progress.
“Once we understood how dire this project was, and once everybody agreed that we needed to update the rules, the choice was very clear … update the rules while you pause the project,” Rupasinghe said.
He believes Kandavel’s actions came a step too late.
A lot of frustration is because residents “haven’t seen leaders actually act quickly enough to deal with a very quickly changing technology,” he said. “They’re in a position to be getting briefed and have support from several full-time staff. This is the job … to pay attention to the changes that are being proposed.”
Rupasinghe, who up until June worked as a transportation planner for WSP Global Inc. — the engineering firm that produced the proposal’s traffic assessment — has become one of the project’s most vocal adversaries.
While he worked under the WSP logo, he explained, his day-to-day work was siloed in a division separated from the teams responsible for the data centre project.
“I have never worked on any data centre projects,” he told the Star. “All my engineering projects were outside of Toronto, and I stopped working before registering as a candidate.”
His focus has been to “run and serve for the community of Scarborough Southwest, and the campaign takes full-time attention,” he said.
He dismissed discourse surrounding his former employment at the company, which has “more than 70,000 employees” worldwide, as “just misinformation that’s being circulated.” He noted that WSP is among a small number of firms typically hired to conduct such assessments.
Like fellow community members, Rupasinghe expressed skepticism about reports on the data centre’s noise and environmental footprints, which council has now ordered to be peer-reviewed.
He was equally as skeptical about Kandavel’s level of knowledge surrounding the development, noting that he “left with more questions than answers” following the July town hall.
“It was very clear that the councillor and his team were uninformed about what’s going on,” he said.
