Bank of America is ready to expand its data center capacity and weighing its property near Newark, Delaware, as the site to build the new facility, Delaware Online reported Thursday.

Alan Levin, director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, told the news service that the second-largest banking firm in the US would start with a US$300m build-out that could potentially scale to about $700m over time. “We view this as a major investment by Bank of America into Delaware.”

This location, however, is only one of the options. The bank is weighing other states as well and the plans are in very preliminary stages at the moment.

Levin chairs Delaware’s Infrastructure Investment Committee, to which Bank of America officials made a presentation recently as part of a request for a $10m state grant to help fund construction of a fiber-optic cable that would extend to a connection point with another network near Philadelphia.

If the plans proceed, the cable infrastructure will be built and owned by the large US network operator Zayo Group.

The potential data center building at the site will be 230,000 sq ft and cost about $311m. It will be built on a 50-acre site the bank already owns.

The property is adjacent to an existing Bank of America campus.

The infrastructure committee has given the company six months to decide whether or not to move forward with construction in Delaware, if it wants to keep the cable grant option on the table.