According to local media reports, The Jefferson County Economic and Industrial Development Authority board authorized the land sale on Friday, enabling Blue Cross to go forward with its plans to build a 55,000 square foot facility on the 25 acres it now owns in Jefferson Metropolitan Park Lakeshore. The data center is expected to be complete in 2010.

As it often the case, the organization says it has decided to go forward with this type of expansion due to sheer demand.

Blue Cross spokesman Jim Brown says the firm has substantial data processing needs to serve 3.6 million customers in Alabama and around the country. And although the new complex will create some jobs, Brown says it is not expected to be a considerable number.

This facility is the third significant data center project announced over the past few weeks in Birmingham, according to reports by Data Center Knowledge.

Late last month, AT&T reported it will invest $40 million to upgrade its facility as an ongoing expansion of its data center network.

Then in June, the parent company of Alabama Power, The Southern Co, announced that it will invest around $20 million to build a new data center, also in Jefferson Metropolitan Park Lakeshore, to support its operations across the Southeast.

Data center announcements continued to appear prominently last week. On Friday, the Bank of America announced $90 million expansion plans to more than double the size of its 13-year-old data center in Platte County, Kansas while Research in Motion reported it has purchased a tech facility in Plano, Texas for use as a data center for its Blackberry network.