The Times Herald reported on May 26th that Norristown’s council recently voted to advertise an ordinance that would allow data centers by conditional use in the municipality’s Heavy Industrial zoning district.
In the article, Norristown’s solicitor, Sean Kilkenny, was quoted on what the municipality is allowed to do and what it can’t do when it comes to zoning:
We got a request from counsel [council] to make sure that we had the toughest legal standards possible for data standards in Pennsylvania,” he said. “You can’t have a moratorium — meaning you can’t fully prevent them — but what you can do is put them in a zoning district and make sure that there are tough, reasonable restrictions on them…