I'd be willing to bet that a lot of what drives people away from CRPG is the lack of Western servers. I know for me that during peak hours I consistently see spikes of up to 300 ping on the Chicago servers. It's just about unplayable. How can anyone expect a community to grow around a niche mod if you are only providing decent gaming experience for a fraction of the country? It just won't happen.
Now if a mistake happens, and a server goes up that isn't geared toward the majority of this mod's western community, it's going to slow it's growth, or downright drive away people whom might have otherwise provided needed servers/resources for the communities growth.
Again I can't stress enough that North/West Canada(and the only person playing M&B in Alaska) represents a very small portion of the Western population. I understand wanting to have lowest possible ping, but if you think of it in terms of community growth, ask yourself if you would you be willing to sacrifice a 30 ping for a 60 ping so that the majority could have a 60 ping as well? This is all I'm proposing and it's really not unreasonable. A Seattle server should be heavily considered later when more of Native players are drawn in to play!
But for the time being you have to realize there are just more people living in the South/West then up the North and meeting the needs of majority should be goal with this server. It can only strengthen the community.