Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles cut the ribbon Thursday on the city’s first interactive digital kiosk, installed at the corner of 5th Street and Beatties Ford Road in Five Points Plaza. The touch-screen unit, operated by IKE Smart City, offers wayfinding, local business listings and an emergency call button, and it marks the debut of what’s planned as a 30-kiosk network stretching across Charlotte’s busiest corridors.
Lyles celebrated the milestone in a post on X, writing that the kiosks “will make it easier for residents and visitors to find information, navigate our city and stay connected while they’re out and about,” and calling it “another step toward a more connected” Charlotte, according to a post from Mayor Vi Lyles. The Beatties Ford Road kiosk’s touch screen currently displays wayfinding information alongside a promotion for nearby Uptown Mart and a rotating piece of local art — Maria Napier’s 2024 work “Park View” — alongside its emergency and touch-screen features.
Today we celebrate the ribbon cutting for IKE Smart City’s digital kiosks in Charlotte. These kiosks will make it easier for residents and visitors to find information, navigate our city and stay connected while they’re out and about.
— Mayor Rob Harrington (@CLTMayor) August 20, 2026
Another step toward a more connected,… pic.twitter.com/eWefUFgUZo
A Citywide Rollout Years in the Making
The single kiosk at Five Points Plaza is the first physical installation from a much larger plan. According to WCNC, the city intends to deploy 30 interactive kiosks total across high-traffic areas designated as Corridors of Opportunity and Municipal Service Districts, including South End, University City, West Boulevard, SouthPark and Beatties Ford Road.
The rollout follows a formal vote by Charlotte City Council on October 27, 2025, amending two municipal codes — Section 10-141, which allows digital kiosks within the public right-of-way, and Section 19-208, which permits illuminated commercial signage in those same rights-of-way. The same report notes the ADA-compliant, multilingual kiosks are built with touchscreen mapping, free public Wi-Fi, real-time light rail scheduling, text-to-cell wayfinding, local business promotion, and the integrated emergency call button now visible at the Beatties Ford Road unit.
No Cost to Taxpayers, Guaranteed Revenue for the City
The financial structure behind the network is designed to keep Charlotte off the hook for any expense. Under the 10-year agreement, with an option to renew for another decade, the kiosk network runs at zero upfront or ongoing cost to taxpayers while guaranteeing the city at least $8,000 per kiosk annually — a combined $240,000 a year across the full network — or 30% of net advertising revenue, whichever is greater, with those minimum payments rising 10% every five years.
That arrangement shifts nearly all operational burden onto the vendor. Per the same WCNC reporting, IKE Smart City bears total responsibility for kiosk design, site permitting, physical installation, routine maintenance, software updates and ad sales — addressing a common concern about who handles upkeep and vandalism repairs once the hardware hits the sidewalk.
Why Five Points Plaza Was Chosen First
The choice of Beatties Ford Road and West 5th Street as the network’s starting point is not incidental. As Hoodline has reported, Five Points Plaza sits within Charlotte’s Historic West End, an anchor of the city’s Corridors of Opportunity program, which has directed more than $259 million in public and private funding toward safety and commercial revitalization in the area.
Before any hardware went in the ground, the city spent months gathering resident input. The City of Charlotte opened a community engagement phase in March and circulated a public survey in April asking residents what content they wanted to see, including local event calendars, small-business highlights and transportation services.
Part of a Broader Digital Equity Push
City officials tie the kiosk network to a longer-running effort to close the digital divide. The rollout aligns with Charlotte’s Smart Charlotte program, created in 2020, and a broader $10 million digital inclusion effort that earned the city recognition as a 2025 Digital Inclusion Trailblazer from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, according to the City of Charlotte.
Charlotte isn’t the first North Carolina city to try this model. The Downtown Raleigh Alliance notes that Raleigh completed installation of 16 similar ad-supported IKE Smart City kiosks throughout its downtown core in fall 2024 under the same no-taxpayer-cost framework. IKE’s parent company, Orange Barrel Media, operates kiosk networks in more than 16 municipal jurisdictions nationwide, including Miami, Houston, Tampa, Tempe and Baltimore.
With the Beatties Ford Road kiosk now live, the remaining 29 units are expected to follow across Charlotte’s designated corridors in the months ahead, extending free Wi-Fi, transit information and emergency assistance to more of the city’s highest-traffic public spaces.
