The Eastern Schuylkill Regional Planning Commission has readied amendments to a zoning ordinance that would regulate data centers and warehouses.

And soon, member municipalities will be voting on those revisions, solicitor Tony Odorizzi told Tamaqua Borough Council this week.

Odorizzi also serves as solicitor for the commission, which handles zoning for Tamaqua and the townships of Rush, Schuylkill and Walker.

“It’s been four months since ESRP started meeting to revise its zoning ordinance in response to the corrective amendments we’re taking to provide for a couple of uses — data centers, warehouses and short-term rentals,” Odorizzi said.

The ordinance is now being forwarded from ESRP to member municipalities’ planning commissions for their review, he said.

“They make a recommendation — thumbs up/thumbs down — and then borough council can choose what it wants to do with it,” Odorizzi said.

Planning commissions in the townships will do the same for their boards of supervisors.

When the ESRP had one of its first meetings about the ordinance this spring, Odorizzi told attendees that under law, zoning must allow for data centers, warehouses and short-term rentals. All are new uses and were not included in the ESRP’s previous zoning.

“You have to provide somewhere in your zoning district for those uses,” Odorizzi said at that time.

If the commission didn’t revise its ordinance, it would be considered “exclusionary zoning” — and mean that the uses could be permitted anywhere in the entire district.

A revised ordinance restricts where data centers and warehouses could be located.

The ordinance must be in place by Oct. 11. The date reflects an 180-day time frame to update the current ordinance because of the “deficiency” — or failure to include the new uses — acknowledged earlier this year by the four municipalities’ voting bodies.

The commission meets at 6:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month at Tamaqua Borough Hall.