Officials have granted permission to rezone land for a new data center in Nanaimo, in Canada’s British Columbia.

Nanaimo city council this week voted in favor to pass a third reading of a bylaw to re-zone 2086 and 2090 East Wellington Road from rural to high-tech industrial and paving the way for a planned data center.

The 2.3-hectare site, largely undeveloped but featuring two residential houses, is currently zoned for m Rural Resource [AR1]. The applicant, 2779022 Ontario Inc., was seeking to rezone the land to High Tech Industrial [I3], with additional site-specific use to allow for the proposed data center.

Nanaimo is located on the east side of Vancouver Island, across the Strait of Georgia and opposite Vancouver city.

Data center use is not currently contemplated by existing local zoning bylaws and a new use is proposed as part of a proposed zoning amendment bylaw.

Who is behind 2779022 Ontario Inc., and whether or not the facility is intended for Edge, colocation/wholesale, or cryptomining uses is unclear.

Townsite Planning was representing the applicant, and the facility will still require a separate development permit application.

During the meeting, a number of people spoke in opposition to the project, citing primarily environmental and noise concerns, as well as viable agricultural land being lost. Local press report ‘cries of “shame”’ were shouted by local residents at the meeting

However, Coun. Erin Hemmens said that the land was never going to be used for food production, and has been designated light industrial for years and neighboring property owners are aware of that.

Coun. Ben Geselbracht was the only member to vote against the project, partly due to water usage concerns.

While Vancouver has a number of data centers from multiple providers, Nanaimo has limited local digital infrastructure. Local IT services provider operates one colocation data center out in the city that opened in 2009 out of its 5,000 sq ft (464 sqm) head office in the city.

There are currently no subsea cables serving the coastal city of Nanaimo; the nearest cable landing point is set to be Google’s Vancouver-to-Japan Topaz cable, which will land 40km northwest at Port Alberni and set to go live next year.

The Topaz landing station in Port Alberni was reportedly originally the landing station for the now-defunct Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC), a copper undersea cable built in 1963 and linking Vancouver with Sydney, Australia, and Auckland in New Zealand via Hawaii. Set to be the first fiber cable connecting Canada and Asia, the Topaz cable system will consist of 16 fiber pairs, for a total capacity of 240 Tbps. It will land in Shima and Takahagi in Japan.