Toronto Downtown Data Centre | 38.5m | 4s | Equinix Inc | WZMH

ADRM said:
Interesting tidbits here from Matt Elliott's excellent City Hall Watcher newsletter:

Equinix’s Data Centre, operators of that building near the Distillery that looks like a punch card and has lots of servers inside, has hired StrategyCorp to lobby Toronto Building staffers to “ensure the continued construction of Equinix’s data centre expansion, which supports the provision of an essential service.” It appears they want to make sure they can keep working on their expansion during the pandemic. StrategyCorp’s Aidan Grove-White is on the file.
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It certainly feels like an essential good, although I don't have any idea how close to the cap we are for internet distribution in Toronto. (Not my field.)

I have questions about that very interesting looking art installation. I wonder if that moves as you move along the side of the building possibly, interacting with pedestrians passing by the side of the? Regardless, it looks novel in those pictures.
 
Some sort of drill on site today.
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I like the form of the building, but all the benches feel a bit like wishful thinking. Is anyone really going to want to linger at Front and Parliament, on a major arterial between a windowless data centre and a police station? There's only so much that public art can do. I guess we can just hope that as the northeast and southeast corners of this intersection are redeveloped, they bring something a bit more engaging.

To be clear, the architecture here is about as good as it gets for a data centre. But at the end of the day, it's still a data centre.
 
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I really like this. I wonder why they can't just build data centres underground in urban environments though?
As for the benches.... if there is a community around this area, where people will be walking past, and they wanna take a seat and look at the art for a few minutes, then why not?
 
These are good for data centres but they will kill the street vibe in this location, which right now is pretty bad but once the public space is built across the street, has potential to become a destination. I wish they could have at least put some retail facing the street with the data centre behind it.
 
Not sure how I feel about the roof, which seems disproportionate to the rest of the building.
 
I know how I feel about it: it looks fantastic, so bold, very cool, it'll help make this place a local landmark.

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smably said:
I like the form of the building, but all the benches feel a bit like wishful thinking. Is anyone really going to want to linger at Front and Parliament, on a major arterial between a windowless data centre and a police station? There's only so much that public art can do. I guess we can just hope that as the northeast and southeast corners of this intersection are redeveloped, they bring something a bit more engaging.

To be clear, the architecture here is about as good as it gets for a data centre. But at the end of the day, it's still a data centre.
Click to expand...
I would imagine that the benches also function as a security measure (anti-vehicle ramming).
 
Agreed, this will look great.
At the same time (allow me to rant), it's sad that a significant public library was razed here as part of a land swap for the first parliament site that apparently will be commemorating our heritage for years (decades) as a surface parking lot, car wash and car dealership. The developers of the data centres had much more ambitious/productive plans for that land.
The master plan for the swapped land is supposed to finally issue by fall 2020..to build the site out over...10 to 20 years: https://www.toronto.ca/services-pay...ent-project/first-parliament-project-details/
The work on the land swap deal is already approaching its 20th anniversary. Here's a 17 year old G&M article discussing: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...ite-imminent-councillor-says/article25286720/
I appreciate Rome wasn't built in a day, but seriously?
 
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