MARION &#8212 A company has announced plans to build a nearly $7 million data center that will house computer systems and equipment for area businesses, government and educational institutions.

Involta LLC of Cedar Rapids said construction on a 20,000-square-foot building is expected to begin in October. The data center is expected to begin operation in August 2008.

Bruce Lehrman, Involta’s CEO, said the data center will benefit many businesses in the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids area, including shared costs for a secure environment and off-site data storage in case of disaster.

“It is often not cost effective for businesses to independently build and support the redundant systems and security features this data center will offer,” Lehrman said.