'Sovereign' data centre eyed for site affected by deadly Vancouver building collapse | Daily Hive

'Sovereign' data centre development proposed for site impacted by deadly East Vancouver building collapse

Concept of the data centre at 3438 Lougheed Highway, Vancouver. (Mara + Natha Architecture/True North Sustainable Infrastructure)

Located near Vancouver’s easternmost boundary, a commercial and warehouse building that was affected by a deadly neighbouring construction accident just over four years ago is now slated to become a data centre.

A new development permit application has been submitted for 3438 Lougheed Highway (East Broadway) — a mid-block property with a three-storey building constructed in 1970.

Although the building appears to be only one storey when viewed from Lougheed Highway to the north, it contains additional levels below street grade that are visible from the laneway to the south.

Gizella Pastry’s industrial bakery previously occupied below-grade space spanning both 3438 Lougheed Highway and the adjacent property at 3432 Lougheed Highway, which has a similar built form and was also constructed in 1970.

The eastern property of 3438 Lougheed Highway currently contains physiotherapy and rehabilitation clinics at street level, with the former bakery space below grade now vacant. The western property of 3432 Lougheed Highway previously contained the Bimmer Haus car repair shop at street level, while its portion of the former bakery space below grade is also vacant.

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On July 14, 2022, a construction worker operating a Bobcat skid-steer loader on the surface vehicle parking lot of the west building at 3432 Lougheed Highway piled about 200 tons of dirt and soil on one side of the rooftop parking lot, next to Bimmer Haus at the street level with Lougheed Highway. The roof was not designed to handle such loads, which resulted in a partial collapse of the concrete structure into the bakery space below.

Nearly 90 people were working in the bakery at the time of the incident, with two taken to hospital and eight requiring rescue by emergency crews. One man working for Gizella Pastry’s parent company, C.H. Guenther Bakeries, was killed in the accident, with his body recovered from the rubble more than a day later.

The spaces of the longtime bakery and Bimmer Haus — which had only been in business at the building for roughly a year, after renovating and taking over the space of Happy Valley restaurant — incurred very substantial damage. Due to structural safety issues and the damage in the west building, both the bakery — which continuously spanned the below-grade spaces of both the east and west buildings — and the car repair shop never reopened, and the entire west building remains vacant to this day.

Site of the 2022 building roof collapse at 3432 Lougheed Highway, Vancouver. (Google Maps)

central valley greenway closure vancouver august 2022

Central Valley Greenway closure in August 2022 due to the building roof collapse at 3432 Lougheed Highway. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

SkyTrain’s elevated Millennium Line guideway and the Central Valley Greenway run immediately south of the properties. Directly to the east of both buildings, at 3454 Lougheed Highway, is the permanent headquarters and main warehouse of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, which acquired the property in 2025.

In 2023, the same year Bimmer Haus filed a lawsuit against the construction contractor and Gizella Pastry, the bakery company sought the services of commercial real estate firm JLL to sell the damaged west building of 3432 Lougheed Highway. As of today, three years later, this damaged property remains available for purchase for its major non-residential redevelopment potential under the City of Vancouver’s new Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan.

As for the eastern half of the bakery complex, according to the new development permit application, Kamloops-based True North Sustainable Infrastructure intends to retrofit the 1970-built, three-storey east building of 3438 Lougheed Highway into a data centre, with the 26,000 sq. ft. below-grade former bakery space hosting servers and associated electrical, cooling, and network equipment.

Directly above the warehouse level, about 4,500 sq. ft. of existing space will serve the facility’s office, meeting, service, and administration uses. There will be a 24/7 manned security presence at this site for data centre operations.

3438 lougheed highway vancouver data centre true north sustainable infrastructure

Site of the data centre at 3438 Lougheed Highway, Vancouver. (Google Maps)

Concept of the data centre at 3438 Lougheed Highway, Vancouver. (Mara + Natha Architecture/True North Sustainable Infrastructure)

According to the applicants, the project aligns with the Government of Canada’s push to expand domestic data centre capacity as a matter of national security and economic resilience. The federal government’s strategy is grounded on the basis that more “sovereign” data centres located within Canada would help ensure that sensitive and proprietary information belonging to governments, businesses, post-secondary institutions, researchers, and other organizations is stored and processed within the country.

“The facility functions as a high-density computing environment in which data is stored and processed for use by enterprises and institutions. The Federal Government’s sovereign compute mandate of the operation means that all compute, data, and resulting intellectual property remain on Canadian soil, subject exclusively to Canadian law and governance frameworks,” reads the application by Mara + Natha Architecture.

“Operations at the property consist of the installation, operation, maintenance, and continuous monitoring of high-performance GPU, CPU and memory clusters, supporting networking fabric, power distribution and conditioning equipment, and precision cooling infrastructure. Raw inputs to the facility are electrical power and computational workloads; outputs are inference results and associated software artefacts delivered to clients via secure private network connections.”

Cooling equipment and emergency diesel-powered backup generators will be installed on the western side of the building’s rooftop — placed on top of vibration isolators and screened from public view.

In recent years, data centres have become increasingly controversial, particularly facilities dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI). AI operations can consume significantly more electricity and water than conventional data storage, raising concerns about their environmental and public infrastructure impacts. There are also broader concerns about the rapid expansion of AI and its potential to displace jobs.

The application does not specify what kind of data centre this will be. However, True North’s website states that they are in the business of building and operating data centres for a wide spectrum of uses.

“We are shaping through intelligent, energy-efficient digital environments that empower AI, cloud, and high-density workloads. We don’t just build — we create high-performance, fibre-connected, scalable facilities that form the foundation for Canada’s digital economy. With sites across British Columbia, our infrastructure supports everything from mission-critical enterprise systems to next-gen AI processing platforms,” states True North’s description of their business.

Site of the data centre at 3438 Lougheed Highway, Vancouver. (Google Maps)

Concept of the data centre at 3438 Lougheed Highway, Vancouver. (Mara + Natha Architecture/True North Sustainable Infrastructure)

For this project site, closed-loop cooling equipment will be used to minimize water consumption, with water recycled through the closed loop and evaporation conducted through the rooftop coolers only during the warmest days of the year. According to the applicants, the data centre’s water use will be less than or equivalent to the water use of the site’s previous industrial bakery.

Additionally, there will be heat recovery capabilities, with the facility designed to incorporate a district energy utility room to enable the “recovery and distribution of low-carbon heat to large mixed-use projects planned in the area.” So far, BC Housing’s 11-acre Skeena Terrace social housing redevelopment immediately to the north is the only confirmed large mixed-use project planned for the area. More than a dozen new buildings are planned at the aging social housing site, reaching up to 36 storeys and containing over 1,900 homes — a mix of social housing and secured purpose-built rental housing.

True North was founded in 2024, and they now have two data centres in Kamloops and Merritt and one facility under construction in Kamloops. This East Vancouver location will be their fourth facility, with the company indicating they have ambitious plans to expand into other provinces to meet the “rapidly growing demand for secure, sustainable data infrastructure.”

Within Metro Vancouver, two major AI data centre proposals from a Telus-Westbank partnership have attracted much of the recent local attention and criticism relating to such emerging technologies. One would involve converting a Mount Pleasant office building that previously housed Hootsuite, while the other is a substantially larger, purpose-built data centre proposed above Creative Energy’s steam plant next to BC Place Stadium.

Last month, amid significant public interest, Vancouver City Council sent the Mount Pleasant data centre proposal back to City staff for further review and additional public consultation. The project is now expected to return for consideration by the next City Council in 2027, following this fall’s civic election.

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