Small City, Big Growth: How Kings Mountain Used GIS to Streamline Zoning and Development

Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, the City of Kings Mountain has recently embarked on multiple development projects and expects more over the next several years.

Henry Earle, the city’s planning director, noted that on one side of town, near the border with South Carolina and on sovereign land of the Catawba Nation, a new $1 billion casino resort is nearing completion of a 24-story, 385-room hotel.

Near the resort is a lithium mine spanning 1,700 acres. The city is situated in a geologic region that has the largest bedrock of lithium deposits in the US. In the past, these were mined to support defense efforts and make nuclear weapons; now, lithium is in high demand for the US electric vehicle battery market.

“These two projects are polar opposites and are very unique,” said Earle. “It’s not a big city by any stretch, but the casino has spurred a lot of development.”

With just 11,000 residents, Kings Mountain city staff found themselves navigating challenges that are commonly seen in much larger communities—managing new and upcoming development projects while preserving the city’s historical charm, especially as institutional knowledge begins to fade due to longtime staff reaching retirement age.

The City of Kings Mountain manages four utilities: water, sewer, electric, and gas. For a long time, the city relied on Cleveland County’s geographic information system (GIS) and paper-based maps, but it was limited to tax information for parcel ownership, and data was decentralized. After several years working in planning for that county, Earle joined the City of Kings Mountain staff and soon realized how major development projects put pressure on planning, utility, and the code enforcement team’s workflows. 

He knew that the paper-based maps and fragmented datasets were no longer sustainable. As an end user of GIS technology, Earle understood that embracing Esri’s ArcGIS ecosystem and finding a valuable partner were keys to how the city could transform their development. 

“The city realized that we weren’t getting any smaller,” said Earle. “We needed to make sure we were being thoughtful in managing our information.” 

Architect and city planner Suhag Kansara founded ViewPro, an Esri partner, because he saw that GIS was not being leveraged to its’ fullest capacity. He built ViewPro on a “planners first” approach.

“Particularly for community development or planning within local government, there was no way to tell a unified story one parcel at a time in a one-stop mapping application,” Kansara said. “So, we have taken every opportunity we can get to extend the Esri ecosystem to fit with what cities are looking for.”

In 2020, ViewPro began to help Kings Mountain collect and visualize zoning data to enable city staff to gain real-time insights for more consistent enforcement and greater confidence in decision-making. They achieved this by adopting ArcGIS Online with ArcGIS Dashboards and ArcGIS Survey123.

At that time, Kings Mountain had only one GIS license, but after a few years of a proprietary mapping application with ViewPro, they completed a GIS needs assessment within the city’s departments. That helped ViewPro build a road map for GIS business requirements. Kings Mountain began to invest in more licenses to use GIS for ditch inspections and leaf collection.

“Since 2022, they’ve had a local government enterprise agreement in place; now virtually every license is used for every department,” continued Kansara.

“Information is power, and it’s been a tremendous success,” said Earle. “I credit city staff and Suhag for working so diligently on it because they built it together; it’s been a great thing for us to have in our office.”

Earle soon identified that staff also needed a better way to track violations. So, his staff leveraged ViewPro’s custom ArcGIS Survey123 application to build a mobile-friendly solution with smart forms for zoning officers.

Standard, out-of-the-box tools do not typically include features like automated 14-day reminders, color-coded alerts for violation timelines, or automatic printing of code violation letters—all of which require minimum input from the city staff.

To solve this, ViewPro extended the Esri ecosystem by building these custom functionalities directly into the zoning application.

The app enables them to capture, track, and manage violations from the field site using tablets or mobile phones online or offline. Then, data is sent back to the office to view on a dashboard created with ArcGIS Dashboards. With the faster application in place, zoning officers only need to input a few sentences into the app to generate enforcement letters that are later mailed.

One example that Earle gave is that with the Survey123 application, a code enforcement officer could ask for a report of the past six months detailing where violations occurred, what the solution was, how many were unresolved, and how many were fixed with just a few clicks.

“Being up to date in real time has been the best part,” said Earle. “Staff don’t have to come back to the office to figure out what was going on in the field, because all of that is at their fingertips. It’s helping us see our entire process on one screen.”

This automation has saved city staff hours compared to their previous workflows. In the past, it was necessary to review file cabinets filled with information, and making sense of which code violations were followed up on was inefficient and time-consuming.

“The Esri ecosystem has allowed us to input complaints both in and out of the office and generate base reports, eliminating the need to create reports from scratch or copy previous ones,” said Jaylon M. Smallwood, City of Kings Mountain zoning administrator. “This system has enabled our department to broaden its efforts in enforcing the city’s regulations, even with just one enforcement officer.”

Additionally, having Esri’s ArcGIS technology in place has reduced the number of errors that can occur when mobile staff try to remember to jot down which inspection they performed four or five hours ago.

“Now it’s closer to 75 percent time savings,” said Earle. “It’s so much faster than it was before, because it was a cumbersome process finding that file folder or keeping up with due dates on a whiteboard.” 

After witnessing such success with zoning and code enforcement violations, Earle now plans to work with other city departments to adopt GIS across their business units. “The next thing for us is further updates to our utility mapping,” said Earle. 

As the city plans more development in major neighborhoods and prepares for increased tourism traffic from the casino resort, staff want to ensure they address developers’ more complex questions about project proposals. 

“If they have to run a mile of a gas line to get to where they want to go, that’s a big expense and they need to know that up front,” explained Earle. “I need to make sure that we have all of that mapped correctly so that I can speak with 100 percent confidence when I’m talking to the developer and be 100 percent accurate.” 

A small city like Kings Mountain has realized the possibilities of GIS technology to support and enhance their growth, and they are eager for other communities to learn from their example.