Jim Thorpe Borough Council will vote Thursday on a $3,000 work order with Entech Engineering to update its zoning boundary map, but officials stressed the project does not include any changes to the districts themselves.

“They are just looking at the existing map and putting together something clearer for planning to look at,” Councilman Connor Rodgers said.

Even without immediate changes, the question of expanding the business district — particularly along West Broadway — continues to spark debate among residents, business owners and borough officials.

At Thursday’s council workshop, James Dougher, a full-time West Broadway resident who also operates a short-term rental, is a Jim Thorpe planning commission member and serves as president of the Jim Thorpe Tourism Agency, described how his neighborhood has changed. He emphasized he was speaking only as a resident.

“I’m in the land of Airbnbs where I live right now,” Dougher said. “I’ll have five next to me. I have my own attached to me and on the other side of that I will have another at some point in time, and across the street there’s another.”

He said many families remain, but the balance has shifted.

“I bought a house to be in a residential neighborhood,” Dougher said. “It’s changing. There’s no doubt about it.”

Dougher argued that the borough should cap the number of short-term rentals.

“This is me personally saying this, not JTTA or the planning commission,” he said. “The number of short-term rentals in the borough should be regulated with a set number — 200, 500, 100, whatever the case might be — just as we did with bars and liquor licenses years ago. I think we’re saturated.”

Council President Greg Strubinger said he understood his concerns.

“The reason you’re saying it’s residential is because you live there,” Strubinger said. “And we have other full-time families that live there.”

Housing costs are another issue, Dougher added.

“The cost of housing in town is pretty high,” he said. “On Broadway or West Broadway, you’re not going to find anything less than $400,000. That’s not going to attract somebody looking to live here on a full-time basis.”

While Dougher expressed concern about losing the character of the neighborhood, some short term rental owners said expanding the business district would help the town handle growth.

The commercial zone, as it stands now, ends around the Mauch Chunk Opera House. At a tourism meeting earlier in the week, Brian Evans said he anticipated the influx of visitors years ago.

“When we first moved here, I could see it was going to get a lot busier real soon,” Evans said. “There weren’t enough seats in restaurants, there weren’t enough places to shop, and there weren’t enough places to sleep.”

He said the borough should prepare by giving businesses room to grow.

“We’ve got to create opportunities for businesses beyond the isolated business district that now exists,” Evans said. “Expanding the zoning of the business district wouldn’t push out residents who live there. It would just remove barriers for people who want to invest in those buildings along West Broadway.”

Evans added that expansion could help manage visitors.

“We need more space,” he said. “We need to be able to spread people out over a greater distance so they’re not leaning into our streets or standing in lines down the block to get into restaurants. We just don’t have that space now.”

He said allowing businesses to develop gradually along West Broadway would meet both current and future demand.

“I’d love to see the borough consider expanding the commercial zoning district to remove some of those barriers and allow businesses to develop organically over time,” Evans said. “That way it doesn’t displace residents who want to stay, but it also helps meet the demand that we know is coming.”

Dougher stressed Thursday that he does not support expanding the business district along West Broadway, despite the changes happening around him.

“Would it make some sense to come from the opera house up to the jail as a commercial district? I don’t know,” Dougher said. “There are still families who live on the blocks in between. There are still quite a few houses that are residential.

“There are also a lot of Airbnbs and secondary homes, but personally I’m not toward expanding it.”