From City Centre to Data Centre - a bold proposal*

Katrina Ingram
1 hour ago
3 min read

Edmonton is known for hockey, cold winters and a really big mall. One might argue that we have the really big mall - which was once the largest in the world - because of the cold winters and that our identity as a winter city fosters our love of hockey. It’s all connected.

Recently one of our (smaller) malls has gone bankrupt. Edmonton City Centre - a 1.4 million square foot facility in the heart of downtown - is now in receivership. In pre-COVID times this former mall’s location might have been considered prime real estate. But in 2025, being downtown is an enormous downside. A recent CBRE report highlights this commercial property divide. Retail properties outside of downtown, especially that really big mall, command rents several orders of magnitude higher than downtown. That’s because downtown has gone downhill, which is not just an Edmonton problem.

At the same time that downtown retail is hitting the skids, there’s an unprecedented global demand to build data centres for AI. The Government of Alberta has developed a data centre strategy which aims to establish Alberta as a global leader in AI data centre operations.

It doesn’t take a chatbot to put two and two together….let’s turn the city centre into a data centre!

Downtown data centres are a thing. From Vancouver to Toronto, LA to Atlanta, downtown data centres provide “robust, low-latency connectivity to dense networks of cloud providers, carriers, and enterprises”, according to a helpful AI overview for the query 'downtown data centers'. These facilities range in size from a relatively small 5,000 sq. ft. at Vancouver’s Cologix Van1 space, to a much grander 200,000 sq. ft. at LA’s Coresite LA1.

At 1.4 million square feet, Edmonton could house the mother of all downtown data centres. What we've done for malls, we can do for data centres.

This facility could encompass a true hyper-scaler. It would be bigger than the one Elon Musk is building in Texas - which is only a mere 578,000 square feet. The opportunity could be MASSIVE. Not only that, we could also keep the branding just by adding ‘data’ - The Edmonton City Data Centre. It's a literal example of data-driven rebranding.

Housing data, sort of like digital housing

Imagine AI as the digital beating heart of the city. It’s hard to think of a more techno- progressive, future forward statement than replacing a bunch of former retail outlets and office towers with a bunch of servers. It perfectly captures this moment. Some have proposed that this site be turned into housing. A data centre would be like housing for our digital ‘co-workers’. Who knows, maybe once the singularity is unleashed, we all may ‘live’ in this new ‘housing’ project as digital versions of ourselves - vastly exceeding our City's density goals.

The Edmonton City Data Centre can also serve as an educational point of interest, fostering inter-generational conversations about the impacts of digital technology on physical place. Imagine a father, standing in downtown Edmonton, wistfully talking to his child about bygone days:

“You see son, there used to these things called department stores where’d be go to buy everything from underwear to luggage. Now, of course, our AI agents anticipate our every need - but I sure miss those days of over paying for a pair of jeans and slurping an Orange Julius at the food court….which bring me to food courts....”

It could be a jumping off point to explain to our youth how our society neglected some of its most vulnerable members, leading to urban decline, which in turn made city centres ripe for redevelopment. There could be conversations about the energy and water needed to run a 1.4 million square foot data centre because the facility would remain visibly present, rather than obscurely out of sight in some small town. Plus, the facility would be accessible by transit for the five people employed there who occasionally monitor the equipment and keep it dust free.

In short, there is no need to build new when we can simply renew. All it takes is a very small amount of imagination.

*not really an actual proposal, in case that isn't completely obvious

By Katrina Ingram, CEO, Ethically Aligned AI

Ethically Aligned AI is a social enterprise aimed at helping organizations make better choices about designing and deploying technology. Find out more at ethicallyalignedai.com