There's a new acronym in town.

CRIZ, or City Revitalization and Investment Zone, is "an area of not more than 130 acres that will provide economic development and job creation within a township or borough," according to a press release from the Whitehall Township Industrial & Commercial Development Authority.

Tuesday night, Coplay Borough Council passed a resolution supporting the ICDA application. It is the second of three municipalities to do so, said ICDA Executive Director Howard Lieberman.

Catasauqua Borough Council passed the resolution Monday night. The Whitehall Township Board of Commissioners will consider it Monday, Oct. 14. The two school boards also will consider it in the near future.

Authorized through recent state legislation, a CRIZ provides incentives to developers interested in certain properties. Any business income tax generated from the projects is split between the state and a fund that helps the developer repay loans, said Lieberman.

"CRIZ is very specific. It only works for business generated taxes. It doesn't do anything with residential [developments]," he said.

Only municipalities with populations of 30,000 or more are qualified to apply. With a population of about 26,000, Whitehall would not qualify on its own. By bringing Catasauqua and Coplay on board, Whitehall's application meets population requirements.

Although the competition for a CRIZ designation will be fierce, Liberman said, the ICDA believes an intermunicipal application will have advantages, even if it is rejected.

"We've all been left behind in most of the economic development programs," said Lieberman, adding the application is intended to open the eyes of Harrisburg officials to the needs of smaller municipalities. "There's so much interest in this and we've gotten so much traction that it's going to be difficult for Harrisburg to ignore us."

Lieberman said the CRIZ evolved from the NIZ, or Neighborhood Improvement Zone, that allowed Allentown to fund its arena.

"[Legislators] caught a lot of flack for the way the Allentown NIZ was written," said Lieberman. "It was a one-sided act and only supported Allentown.

"The CRIZ is much more restrictive but for our purposes it does what we need it to do."

The CRIZ application must be made by Oct. 31.

Further details on the ICDA application, including the list of properties, will be released at a news conference Oct. 18