KANNAPOLIS — DataChambers, a North Carolina information technology company, and Castle & Cooke, the developer of the N.C. Research Campus, will break ground at 11 a.m. Tuesday for a 50,000-square-foot data center.  
The event will be held at North Research Campus Drive and Laureate Way, near North Main Street in downtown Kannapolis. Key speakers will be DataChambers CEO Nicholas L. Kottyan and David H. Murdock, Research Campus founder and chairman and CEO of Castle & Cooke and Dole Food Company.
Dr. Steve Lommel, interim president of the David H. Murdock Research Institute, and Lynne Scott Safrit, president of Castle & Cooke North Carolina, also will speak.
Parking will be available off Laureate Way and in the Research Campus parking garage. The event is open to the public.
DataChambers announced the decision to expand into the Charlotte region in June, selecting the Research Campus for its easy access to the interstate and proximity to the Charlotte Douglas International and Concord Regional airports.   
“The N.C. Research Campus gives us an ideal home base for serving Charlotte-area businesses and the growing NCRC community,” Kottyan said in a press release. “We are eager to have the project underway and have the space we need to serve our growing client base.”    
DataChambers currently operates data centers in Winston-Salem and Raleigh. The Kannapolis facility is scheduled to be completed by mid-2014 and will be staffed by 20 to 30 information-technology professionals.
DataChambers plans to host client systems at the new facility and to offer a variety of outsourced information technology services, including monitoring and management solutions, data backup and business recovery services.
To meet the rigorous standards of DataChambers and its clients, the new center will be built to withstand hurricane-force winds and will feature systems for power, security, HVAC and network connectivity. It also will incorporate the latest LEED standards developed by the US Green Building Council for energy-efficient operation.  
Charlotte-area businesses have been selected to support the DataChambers project. Architects at Creech & Associates will design the structure, while McCracken & Lopez will provide mechanical, electrical and fire protection designs. 
Land Design is providing land planning and civil engineering.
“In an information age like the one we are living in, a company like DataChambers and what they bring to not only our campus but our region and state is invaluable to advancing research and our economy,” Murdock said in the statement.
The DataChambers groundbreaking is the second in less than a month at the life sciences hub in downtown Kannapolis. The city of Kannapolis broke ground for a long-awaited 100,000-square-foot municipal center on Oct. 29. 
Together, DataChambers and the city of Kannapolis will bring more than 300 jobs to the campus.
The NCRC Medical Plaza housing Carolinas Healthcare System opened earlier this year, and the Cabarrus Health Alliance headquarters opened in 2012.
The campus has also seen the addition of N.C. State University greenhouse facilities and three speculative laboratory suites in the David H. Murdock Core Laboratory building. Recently, the UNC Charlotte Bioinformatics Research Services Division announced an expansion of its office space.