Bern Township Weighs Warehouse With 32 Conditions

Bern Township's supervisors are set to decide Tuesday whether to approve a warehouse planned next to a residential neighborhood off W. Leesport Road. The proposed approval carries 32 conditions meant to hold down the building's effect on the homes around it.

The Board of Supervisors meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1, at the Township Building, 1069 Old Bernville Road, and its agenda lists a vote on the "Reading One Three, LLC Conditional Use Agreement," according to the posted agenda. A conditional use is a use that a zoning ordinance allows in a district only if the applicant meets set standards and the township signs off, usually with conditions attached.

What the board is deciding

The building is the "Stinson Warehouse," proposed at 1067 W. Leesport Road near Stinson Drive by Reading One Three, LLC. The supervisors already held the evidentiary hearing on the request on Feb. 3, 2026, according to the township's written conditions document, which twice refers back to the testimony and exhibits from that hearing. Tuesday's item is the decision that closes it out: a vote on whether to grant the conditional use subject to the 32 conditions the township has now published. The board can approve, deny, or table it.

The township announced the step in an Aug. 26 notice headed "A Conditional Use Hearing will be held at the September Supervisors' Meeting" and posted the conditions so residents could read them ahead of time. The agenda itself schedules the warehouse as an approval item under the Planning Commission's report, not as a hearing; the only formal public hearing on Tuesday's agenda is on an unrelated alternative-energy ordinance. Residents can still speak to the warehouse during the meeting's public-comment period.

What the 32 conditions do

Most of the conditions target the warehouse's effect on the neighboring homes and roads. Among them:

• Trucks must reach the site by a set path from Route 183 (Bernville Road) along Van Reed Road, Leiscz's Bridge Road, Stinson Drive, and a proposed new Faller Lane, and leave the same way. The developer must push that route to GPS providers such as Google, and post signs.
• Leases must bar trucks from idling more than five minutes in any hour, and employee shifts must be staggered so they do not land at morning and evening rush hour or when school buses run.
• A berm at least 30 feet deep, planted and kept up in perpetuity, must run along the property lines facing the homes. Blue spruce and Douglas fir are barred. Lighting must be shielded from the houses, and rooftop and ground equipment screened from view.
• Product cannot be moved in or out of the building or loaded onto trucks by robots or other automated systems.
• Refrigerated trailers may be kept only in the loading area on Faller Lane, on the side closest to the industrial district.
• The warehouse must use public water and sewer, carry a fire-suppression system, prove the electric supplier can serve it before a building permit issues, file a blasting plan with the state if blasting is needed, and bar bulk blasting to guard against sinkholes.

The developer would also have to update its traffic study six months after the building fills, and reimburse the township for its engineer's and solicitor's costs.

The warehouse that stalled

The project sits on the former Stinson Drive Partners tract, ground developers have circled since 2021. Berks Beat detailed the site in a report on what's planned at W. Leesport and Faller Lane: we reported that Reading One Three, LLC bought a 28-acre lot plus the house parcel at 1067 W. Leesport Road in November 2024, and that earlier township minutes tied the company to Crossroads Beverage Group and a plan for a bottled-water distribution center running around the clock.

The plan hit a wall in the spring. We reported that on April 7 the supervisors denied 5-0 the developer's request to build to 45 feet where the zoning limit is 35, and that the proposal then dropped out of the township's public record. Conditional-use approval is a separate decision from that height ruling. The conditions document does not state the building's square footage; we earlier reported the plan was drawn at about 260,000 square feet. The approval is also tied to the new Faller Lane: the conditions say the warehouse cannot get an occupancy permit until that road and its drainage are built, work the document says is to be done by other parties.

Also on the agenda

The same meeting takes up a public hearing and vote on an alternative-energy ordinance, final land-development approval for Berks Park Lots A, F and G, two grant resolutions, one state and one local, for a John Deere mower, and a time extension, to Oct. 12, for the Riverfront Federal Credit Union plan. The board is also set to approve its 2027 minimum municipal pension obligation and appoint an assistant secretary-treasurer.

How to weigh in

The meeting is open to the public, with a comment period near the start. The Board of Supervisors meets at the Township Building, 1069 Old Bernville Road, Reading. For how zoning decisions split between the county, the state, and your municipality, see our guide to how Berks County government works, and for finding and following your own local meetings, our guide to township and borough meeting schedules.