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.

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, becoming the first Berks municipality with data-center rules on the books. 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. Where each stands, verified against primary records where we could reach them:

Municipality	Status	Detail
Cumru Township	Adopted	Ordinance 798, Data Center Overlay District, April 2026
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 permanent ordinance limiting data centers to certain districts is expected to reach a council vote around January 2027
South Heidelberg Township	Vote taken; text pending	Ordinance 296 (data centers in the I3 Industrial district, part of the shared Southwestern Berks joint zoning) was on the Aug. 25 agenda to be adopted; the township had not yet posted the adopted text
Perry Township	Vote scheduled	Hearing and vote set for Sept. 8, 2026; data centers as a conditional use in the Commercial Light-Industrial district
Upper Bern Township	Vote scheduled	A proposed data-center ordinance (and a separate solar ordinance); hearing and vote set for Sept. 10, 2026
Wyomissing (borough)	Drafting	Council authorized the solicitor to draft data-center rules on Aug. 11, 2026
Tilden Township	Drafting	A draft ordinance was discussed at a July 28 special meeting; no data-center ordinance has been adopted
Bethel Township	Exploring	Working toward a draft; a workshop was expected in September
Upper Tulpehocken Township	Exploring	A data-center ordinance has been listed as pending business; status could not be confirmed in online records

We could not independently confirm one item circulating in news reports: the Reading Eagle reported that Washington Township advertised a data-center zoning ordinance (Ordinance 2026-01) for a public hearing in May 2026, but we have not confirmed a final vote in township records. 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.

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.