Berks County Data Centers: Every Project, Tracked

Data centers are the buildings that store, process, and serve the world's digital data, and the newest ones built for artificial intelligence draw enormous amounts of electricity and water. Berks County has become a target for them, and the response so far has played out almost entirely in township zoning codes. This page tracks what is actually happening: what already operates here, the one large AI campus that has been proposed, and which municipalities have written rules. We will update it as votes happen.

Last updated October 20, 2026: New Morgan Borough's Oct. 19 council agenda is the first posted record that the Data Center Overlay District heard Sept. 14 was enacted as Ordinance 2026-04, and that council is already weighing amendments after letters from the Haycreek Water Association and Joanna Furnace; the vote date and tally are not posted. West Reading's Oct. 20 agenda asks council to authorize advertising a public hearing on data-center regulations, no date given. Oct. 19: The Southwestern Berks joint amendment is now fully enacted and posted: the executed copy on eCode360 carries South Heidelberg's Ordinance 296 (Aug. 25), Wernersville's Ordinance 645 (Sept. 2) and Lower Heidelberg's Ordinance 634 (Sept. 15), so South Heidelberg moves to adopted and Lower Heidelberg joins the table; see our report on the ordinance. Greenwich Township also joins the table. Its Sept. 8 minutes, posted Oct. 14, record the supervisors voting, all in favor, to have the solicitor advertise the draft data-center ordinance and schedule a hearing, choosing to adopt the draft as written rather than revise it and repeat the county and township planning reviews; see our recap. Previous update, Oct. 16: Amity Township's Planning Commission now lists a data-center ordinance among the drafts it is reviewing, the step the September moratorium bought time for, and Jefferson Township's Oct. 1 joint-workshop agenda speaks of a timeline for enactment, with workshops scheduled, as needed, through Nov. 5. Previous update, Oct. 15: Washington Township joins the table as adopted (Ordinance 2026-1, May 28, 2026, found in the township's posted minutes), with a hearing set for Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. on amendments to that ordinance covering water and sewer, power supply and decommissioning, with enactment possible the same night; Spring Township's Sept. 25 Vision Meeting minutes say its final draft has gone to the Planning Commission and the county, with a hearing to come; and Upper Tulpehocken's Sept. 8 minutes record a second round of changes to its draft's setbacks. Previous update, Oct. 14: Wernersville joins the list as adopted; its Sept. 2 minutes record council enacting the Southwestern Berks joint zoning amendment on data centers and warehouses, with data centers allowed only by conditional use in a limited-industrial zone the minutes say lies outside the borough. Richmond Township's Sept. 14 minutes show the supervisors authorized the solicitor to draft a data-center ordinance for the industrial district only. And the county Planning Commission's draft Sept. 9 minutes put the countywide count at 23 data-center zoning amendments received for review. Previous update, Oct. 13: West Reading joins the list; its Oct. 10 budget-meeting agenda asked council to send a revised data-center ordinance to the county Planning Commission for review. Previous update, Oct. 12: Longswamp Township's newly posted minutes show it enacted Ordinance 309, its data-center and solar amendment, on Aug. 25; Maxatawny Township's posted Ordinance 2026-01 shows it enacted data-center zoning on April 15, 2026, six days before Cumru; Upper Tulpehocken's Aug. 11 minutes spell out the parameters of its draft; and Cumru Township has sought an outside engineering firm to review data-center applications under its overlay ordinance. Oct. 11: Perry Township's posted Sept. 8 minutes confirm the unanimous vote and record that no data center has been proposed there; Richmond Township's Oct. 12 review of its draft is previewed. Oct. 10: New Morgan Borough scheduled September hearings on rezoning a borough-owned parcel to Industrial and creating a Data Center Overlay District, and Richmond Township's Oct. 12 agenda lists a review of a draft data-center ordinance. Oct. 9: Bern Township's Planning Commission put a data-center ordinance on its Oct. 13 agenda, and Ontelaunee Township's Sept. 3 agenda asked to advertise a data-center ordinance. On Oct. 8, Reading's draft permanent rules went to City Council's committee, Maidencreek Township scheduled a vote to advertise a Nov. 12 hearing, and Muhlenberg and Jefferson townships were found to be drafting ordinances.

A note on how to read this. There is a lot of noise around data centers, including online directories and AI-written summaries that list Berks projects that turn out not to exist. Everything below is sorted by how well we can confirm it, and we say plainly where a claim does not hold up.

Operating now: a few small ones

Berks already hosts a handful of small, existing data centers. These store and serve data for businesses; none is a large AI campus. Based on the operators' own websites and industry listings, they are:

• Direct LTx and DaSTOR, both at 2561 Bernville Road in Bern Township, in the former GPU/Met-Ed headquarters building. The two are listed separately but share that address and building, so they may be one facility with two operators. Roughly 110,000 square feet of data space.
• Omega Systems, a managed-IT company with an in-house data center at 1121 Snyder Road, Spring Township.
• Contegix (formerly Distributed Systems Services), a roughly 15,000-square-foot facility at One Meridian Boulevard, Wyomissing.

These are the scale of a large office server room, not the hundreds-of-megawatts campuses now in the news.

The big one: an AI campus proposed at the former Titus power plant

The only large data center proposed in Berks so far sits on the site of the former Titus Generating Station in Cumru Township, a 243-megawatt coal plant that Metropolitan Edison built in the early 1950s and that was decommissioned in 2014. The roughly 193-acre site off Poplar Neck Road is now owned by Titus Clean Industries, which has pursued redevelopment there in recent years, including reopening a freight rail terminal.

In May 2026 the owner and partner Go Energy Group announced plans to turn the site into an AI data center campus, branded the "TRON USA AI Campus," starting with a 200-megawatt data center. The developer's own materials describe a much larger long-term vision, a roughly 1,450-megawatt mix of data centers, battery storage, and on-site power generation, with billions in claimed investment. Those figures are the company's, not independently verified.

What matters for residents: as of late August 2026, no land-development or zoning application had been filed with Cumru Township. The project is a proposal, not an approval. The developer told WFMZ it had begun talking with the state and planned to file "the proper paperwork," and that its plan to build its own power supply keeps it "on track" under new state rules (see below).

Cumru did prepare for it. In April 2026 the township adopted Ordinance 798, a Data Center Overlay District, one of the first two Berks municipalities with data-center rules on the books (Maxatawny Township enacted its own ordinance six days earlier, on April 15, 2026). The Reading Eagle reported the vote was 3-1 on April 21, and that the overlay is drawn around the Titus site, with limits on noise, water use, energy, screening, and decommissioning. Commissioners framed it as keeping control, not inviting the project: one told the paper the point "is not to encourage data centers."

The zoning map: who has rules, who is writing them

Most Berks activity is not projects but zoning. A municipality with no data-center rules can be caught flat-footed by an application, so townships across the county are writing ordinances first. The county Planning Commission, which reviews every zoning amendment before a municipality votes, reported in its draft Sept. 9, 2026 minutes that it had received 23 zoning amendments related to data-center regulations to date, the most recent from Spring Township and West Reading. Where each stands, verified against primary records where we could reach them:

Municipality	Status	Detail
Cumru Township	Adopted	Ordinance 798, Data Center Overlay District, enacted April 21, 2026. In September the township posted a request for proposals for an outside engineering team to review data-center conditional-use applications under the ordinance (acoustics, water, electric supply, fire and hazardous materials, decommissioning), with proposals due Oct. 9 and authorization anticipated Oct. 20; the posted file is labeled a draft for solicitor review
Maxatawny Township	Adopted	Ordinance 2026-01, data centers by conditional use in the Industrial district, enacted April 15, 2026 (executed copy): 10-acre minimum lot, 500 feet from an existing home, institution or school, 200 feet from the A-R, R-1, R-2 and NC districts, 100-foot setbacks, 50-foot height, environmental impact assessment and traffic study. The minutes of the April 15 meeting are not posted. A separate draft overlay district has been under review since June (Oct. 12 preview)
Windsor Township	Adopted	Ordinance 2026-01, data centers by conditional use in the Industrial district, enacted Aug. 11, 2026
Reading (city)	Moratorium adopted	Six-month pause adopted July 2026. A draft permanent amendment, reviewed by City Council's Committee of the Whole on Oct. 5 after two city Planning Commission meetings and headed to county Planning Commission review, would allow data centers only by conditional use in the M-C Manufacturing Commercial and H-M Heavy Manufacturing districts and require a community benefits agreement for city-assisted projects (packet); a council vote is expected around January 2027
Amity Township	Moratorium adopted; ordinance drafting	Resolution 26-19 (Sept. 16, 2026), a curative amendment declaring the 1991 zoning ordinance defective for having no data-center rules; stays all data-center applications up to 180 days while the township writes them. The Planning Commission's Oct. 8, 2026 agenda lists "Data Centers" among the ordinances under review
South Heidelberg Township	Adopted	Ordinance 296, enacted Aug. 25, 2026, amending the shared Southwestern Berks County Joint Zoning Ordinance: data centers by conditional use in the I-3 Limited Industrial district, 60-foot height cap, 400-foot setback from any dwelling or residential district, noise capped at 67 dB(A) weekdays 7 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. and 57 dB(A) overnight and all day Saturday and Sunday (not during a power outage), a three-phase noise study, no decommissioning clause; warehouses and truck terminals moved from by-right to conditional use with a 40-foot height cap and 250-foot truck-area setbacks. The motion carried unanimously per the Aug. 25 minutes. The executed three-municipality copy is posted on eCode360 (p. 16: enacted Aug. 25; advertised in the Reading Eagle). Our report
Lower Heidelberg Township	Adopted	Ordinance 634, enacted Sept. 15, 2026, the township's copy of the same Southwestern Berks joint amendment (signed by Paul J. Prutzman, Cheryl L. Johnson and Craig Lutz; p. 17 of the executed ordinance), the last of the three enactments, which the Municipalities Planning Code requires before a joint amendment takes effect; the township's Sept. 15 minutes were not yet posted, and its posted zoning map shows no I-3 district. Our report
Wernersville (borough)	Adopted	Council enacted the Southwestern Berks joint zoning amendment on data-center and warehouse uses on Sept. 2, 2026, after a public hearing; the motion "carried unanimously" per the minutes. The solicitor told council data centers would be allowed only by conditional use in the I3 limited-industrial zone, "which are not within Borough limits," and that South Heidelberg had already approved the amendment with Lower Heidelberg to consider it Sept. 15. The borough's copy is Ordinance 645 (p. 18 of the executed ordinance, signed by council and Mayor Carl Reidler). Our report
Perry Township	Adopted	Ordinance 09-2026, data centers as a conditional use in the Commercial Light-Industrial district, enacted Sept. 8, 2026; the Sept. 8 minutes record the vote as all three supervisors yes and that no data center has been proposed in the township to date
Upper Bern Township	Adopted	Ordinance 173-2026, data centers by conditional use in the GI and AI industrial districts, enacted 3-0 on Sept. 10, 2026 (with a companion solar ordinance, 174-2026)
Longswamp Township	Adopted	Ordinance 309, amending the zoning ordinance for data centers and solar energy systems, enacted Aug. 25, 2026 after a public hearing, per minutes posted Oct. 8. The minutes describe data centers regulated in the Industrial district, hydrogeological studies above certain water-draw thresholds, closed-loop cooling encouraged, a required energy plan and noise provisions; the full text is not posted online (our recap)
Kutztown (borough)	Vote held; outcome pending	Council held a Sept. 15, 2026 hearing and enactment vote on a Chapter 225 amendment defining and regulating data centers; the borough had not yet posted minutes or the adopted ordinance
Maidencreek Township	Hearing being scheduled	The Oct. 8, 2026 agenda asks supervisors to authorize advertising a Nov. 12, 6 p.m. public hearing on a zoning amendment adding a definition and regulations for data centers (agenda)
Greenwich Township	Hearing to be advertised	On Sept. 8, 2026 the supervisors, holding the draft and comments from the Berks County Planning Commission, voted all in favor to authorize the solicitor "to advertise the proposed draft of the Data Center Ordinance and schedule a hearing," choosing to "move ahead with this now and amend the Ordinance as necessary in the future" rather than revise the draft and repeat planning review (minutes, scanned, posted Oct. 14). The draft is not posted online and no hearing notice had appeared in the Law Journal issues posted through Oct. 8. Our recap
Washington Township	Adopted; amendment hearing Oct. 22	Supervisors adopted Ordinance 2026-1, which created Section 131-82, "Data Centers and Data Center Accessory Uses," by unanimous vote on May 28, 2026, after a public hearing, per the May 28 minutes: data centers by special exception in the commercial and industrial districts, 10-acre minimum, 500-foot setbacks from sensitive receptors. A public notice posted on the township homepage sets a public hearing for Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, at 7 p.m. at 120 Barto Road on an amendment to "amend and supplement water and sewer, power supply and decommissioning requirements," and says the supervisors may consider enactment at the meeting immediately following the hearing. The full text is available only at the municipal building and the Berks County Law Library. Our hearing preview has the details
Muhlenberg Township	Drafting	A township official said at the Aug. 17, 2026 meeting that a draft ordinance is before the Berks County Planning Commission, after a resident asked for a moratorium (minutes)
Jefferson Township	Drafting	Supervisors and the Planning Commission discussed a draft AI data center ordinance at an Oct. 1, 2026 joint workshop (agenda), which also raised a joint meeting with the October Planning Commission "for the time line enactment"; the township's notice lists joint workshops on the first Thursday of each month, "on an as needed basis," through Nov. 5, 2026
Ontelaunee Township	Drafting	The Sept. 3, 2026 agenda asked supervisors to authorize the solicitor to advertise "the ordinance dealing with Data Centers"; the outcome is not yet in posted minutes (agenda)
New Morgan (borough)	Adopted (Ord. 2026-04); amendments under discussion	Council held two Sept. 14, 2026 public hearings: one to rezone a borough-owned parcel (56531102497468) from Residential to Industrial, the other to add a Data Center Overlay District to the zoning ordinance (Aug. 10 agenda, Sept. 14 agenda). The Oct. 19 agenda, the first posted record of the outcome, refers to "Ordinance 2026-04 of the data center overlay" and to "the Ordinance that was passed," and says council is taking letters from the Haycreek Water Association and Joanna Furnace "under advisement for a proposed amendment"; if council decides to amend, it would advertise a new public hearing on a date "still to be determined." The vote date and tally are not posted, the only text online is the 19-page hearing draft on the borough's hearings page, and the agenda does not say whether the parcel rezoning passed; see our recap
Richmond Township	Drafting	On Sept. 14, 2026 the supervisors approved a motion "to authorize the drafting of an ordinance for the Data Centers" after the township Planning Commission recommended allowing data centers in the "I" industrial district only; the board discussed conditional use versus special exception (the county Planning Commission recommends conditional use), and the solicitor will prepare the draft (minutes). The Oct. 12 agenda listed "Review Data Center Ordinance Draft" under the solicitor's report, with no draft posted and no vote listed (agenda; our preview)
West Reading (borough)	Hearing to be advertised	The Oct. 10, 2026 budget-meeting agenda asked council to approve forwarding "a revised Data Center Ordinance" to the Berks County Planning Commission for review and comment, the first sign in a posted borough record that West Reading is writing rules (agenda). The Oct. 20 council agenda asks council to ratify that referral and to authorize "the advertisement of a public hearing for the inclusion of Data Center regulations within the Zoning Ordinance"; no hearing date is stated and the draft text is not posted; the borough's July 21 Resolution 2026-15 commits it to enact a curative amendment within 180 days of June 23, which is Dec. 20, 2026, by our arithmetic; see our preview
Bern Township	Drafting	The Planning Commission's Oct. 13, 2026 agenda lists a "Data Center Ordinance discussion" covering decommissioning procedures and facade concerns (agenda)
Wyomissing (borough)	Drafting	Council authorized the solicitor to draft data-center rules on Aug. 11, 2026
Spring Township	Drafting; hearing to come	The township's engineering director told supervisors at the Sept. 25, 2026 Vision Meeting that the final draft of the data-center ordinance had gone to the township Planning Commission and the county, with a public hearing to be held before adoption, per minutes posted Oct. 14. Spring was one of the first five municipalities to start writing rules; see our five-towns report
Tilden Township	Drafting	A draft ordinance was discussed at a July 28 special meeting; no data-center ordinance has been adopted
Upper Tulpehocken Township	Drafting	On Aug. 11, 2026 supervisors directed the solicitor to finalize a draft: data centers by conditional use in the I-1 Industrial district (not the Village Industrial district), a 7-acre minimum lot, a 45-foot height limit, 500-foot setbacks from lot lines, 750 feet from residential zoning or sensitive receptors, a 75-foot buffer with a 15-foot berm, a 55-decibel noise limit, solar panels on 75 percent of the main roof, and Delaware River Basin Commission approval for withdrawals of 75,000 gallons a day or more; the code official was asked to check whether the rules would exclude every I-1 parcel (minutes). On Sept. 8 the board voted unanimously to revise the draft again, per minutes posted Oct. 14: agricultural properties come out of the "sensitive receptors" list and get a 250-foot setback instead, the waterway setback doubles to 500 feet, the setback from residential districts and uses and from the ultimate right-of-way is 500 feet, and adjacent industrial uses get 250 feet; the draft went to the township and county planning commissions for formal review. The ordinance is still listed as old business on the Oct. 13 agenda
Bethel Township	Exploring	Working toward a draft; a workshop was expected in September

One item we could not confirm for weeks is now settled: the Reading Eagle reported that Washington Township advertised a data-center zoning ordinance (Ordinance 2026-01) for a public hearing in May 2026. The township's posted May 28 minutes and signed Ordinance 2026-1 show the board adopted it that night, and the Oct. 22 hearing is on amendments to it. Spring, Exeter, and Bern townships were part of an earlier round of this same wave, covered in our reports on five towns writing data-center rules and six more townships; Windsor's adopted ordinance is in our Windsor recap, and South Heidelberg's in our preview. Perry Township adopted its rules Sept. 8 and Upper Bern followed Sept. 10, both permitting data centers only by conditional use and both setting detailed noise, setback, and decommissioning standards. Kutztown is the first Berks borough, rather than a township, to write its own rules; we previewed its Sept. 15 vote. Amity Township took a different route on Sept. 16, declaring its zoning defective and freezing data-center applications for up to 180 days while it drafts rules.

Two nearby projects are not data centers and are easy to confuse with them: the Core5 development near Bernville (Upper Tulpehocken) is a warehouse and logistics project, and the Berkshire Mall rezoning in Wyomissing is a mall redevelopment. Neither is a data center.

One widely-shared claim that does not hold up

Search for "Berks County data centers" and you may find a "$2 billion CloudHQ Berks 61" hyperscale campus, described in some listings as already under construction. We could not confirm it. CloudHQ's own website lists no Pennsylvania campus of any kind. No Berks County or municipal record we checked shows such a project, and no news outlet has reported it. The listings borrow the name of a real but much smaller development, the roughly 19-acre Berks 61 logistics park along Route 61 in Muhlenberg Township, which is not a data center and is far too small for a campus of the size claimed. The claim traces to online data-center directories that cite no source, amplified by AI search summaries. Until a primary record or credible report appears, we are not treating it as confirmed.

Why the zoning fights matter

Two forces sit behind all of this. First, demand: the regional grid operator, PJM, expects electricity use across its territory to climb sharply through 2030, with the great majority of the growth from data centers, and it has warned that the cost shows up in customers' bills. Second, state policy: on August 18, 2026, Governor Josh Shapiro signed Executive Order 2026-05, which conditions state permits for data centers on the developer securing its own power, signing community-benefit agreements, and, critically, having local approval first. That last piece is why the township ordinances are the real leverage. A data center in Berks needs its municipality's yes before the state will act, so the rules being written now decide what can be built and where.

Watch for beware-of-the-pitch claims too. Rising data-center demand is being used by door-to-door salespeople to push unrelated products, including home solar sold with false claims that a utility "chose" the seller or will "pay for" panels. Your utility does not select rooftop installers or buy homeowners' solar; verify any such claim by calling the number on your bill.

How to follow it

• Township and borough meeting agendas are where ordinances and any application first appear. See how to find your municipality's meeting schedule and how to weigh in on a zoning change.
• A data-center application, if one is filed, would go through both the municipality and the Berks County Planning Commission's land-development review.

We will keep this page current as the September votes happen and if any developer files a formal plan. If you have seen a data-center notice, rezoning, or sales pitch in your community, tell us at corrections@berksbeat.com.