Downtown heritage department store to evolve into ‘hotel for computers’ – Vancouver Sun

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The Harbour Centre complex at 555 West Hastings St. is already B.C.’s leading Internet connectivity hub. But the data centre is about to get much bigger, with the construction of the Spencer Building Carrier Hotel.

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But don’t be confused by the name.

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“People take hotel and they think, ‘There’s already a Delta across the street, why are they putting up another hotel?’ ” said Chris Jones, the facility’s director of data centre infrastructure and operations.

“No, we’re putting in a hotel for computers.”

The construction will be on two floors inside the former David Spencer department store, which is also a former Eaton’s and Simpsons-Sears and now is partly occupied by Simon Fraser University.

Two floors of the 1926 art deco heritage structure will be rebuilt for the carrier hotel, which is tech-speak for “a data centre with lots of connectivity in a major city or metro area.”

“In the technology sector a carrier hotel goes back to the ’90s,” explains Jones.

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“So you’ve got …….

Source: https://vancouversun.com/business/local-business/downtown-heritage-department-store-to-evolve-into-hotel-for-computers