Communitech Data Hub planned for Uptown Waterloo

Being called “one of the most important council decisions of this term,” Waterloo City Council is working to bring a Communitech Data Hub to the old Police Station on Erb Street in Uptown Waterloo.

Waterloo Mayor Dave Jaworsky tells 570 News that the Hub will help organize the terabytes of data that is being gathered on consumer spending and information.

“We noticed that the Police Station was empty so we approached the owner saying, ‘I’m not sure what ideas you have for it but here is an idea that will completely change Uptown Waterloo’ (…) What we have is an opportunity to start creating a centre of excellence on data and to create new companies, to start creating jobs and really the spillover effect is to bring urban employment back to Uptown Waterloo.”

He adds that every time we give a store our postal code or email, that data is being collected but not necessarily being used as efficiently as it could be.

“It’s through this big data that we’re going bring some of the smartest minds here. You’re going to see corporations come in here with investments saying, ‘you know what, we have an enormous amount of data and we need to create outpost here in Waterloo, Ontario to start analyzing that data and make better use of it to better serve our consumers.'”

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