Mooresville Town Hall sign in front of the municipal building

From Siloed Systems to Smart City Security for North Carolina's City of Mooresville

City of Mooresville & ICT

Nestled in the Charlotte, NC region, the City of Mooresville is a fast-growing municipality managing everything from town halls and recreation centers to fire stations, police departments and parks. Over 20 years, the city has grown its ICT Protege GX platform from a single building to 44 sites and nearly 400 doors, all unified on one centrally managed system.

Working with long-standing integrator Sage Security Solutions, Mooresville has steadily expanded its Protege GX deployment to keep pace with the city's growth. New buildings, higher-security credentials, a KeyWatcher key management integration and biometric facial readers for high-security areas have all been added without ever hitting a hardware or scalability roadblock.

Project Highlights

44 controller sites and 387 doors managed across a single unified Protege GX platform
Migrated from Protege SE to GX while retaining original PCB hardware at legacy sites
Integrated KeyWatcher key management to eliminate vehicle key accountability issues
Deployed Suprema biometric facial readers for high-security evidence areas at the Police Department
Remotely scheduled park bathroom access, reducing the need for daily on-site staff

Mooresville, NC, USA

Location

Government

Industry

Sites

387

Doors

It's done everything we needed to do. We've just continuously added on to it and we've never hit a hardware roadblock on what we can and can't do with the system.

— Matt Williard, Infrastructure Manager, City of Mooresville

It's done everything we needed to do. We've just continuously added on to it and we've never hit a hardware roadblock on what we can and can't do with the system.

— Matt Williard, Infrastructure Manager, City of Mooresville

The Story

The City of Mooresville's IT and infrastructure team is responsible for security, access control and building systems across a wide range of municipal facilities, from police and fire stations to parks, utilities and town hall. When Infrastructure Manager Matt Williard joined the city 20 years ago, the team had just two IT employees; today they number 17. Mooresville's relationship with ICT stretches back just as far — around 2005, the city deployed Protege SE, and they've never looked back.

Growing a City, Growing a Platform

What began as a single-site deployment has evolved into one of the most comprehensive municipal Protege GX installations in the region. As the city added fire stations, renovated buildings and brought new parks online, Sage Security Solutions, Mooresville's trusted integrator, simply expanded the existing platform.

The transition from Protege SE to GX brought immediate operational benefits. Where SE required a separate site for every building, GX unified everything under one enterprise-level platform, making it far easier to manage users, access levels and alarm areas across dozens of dispersed locations.

Historic downtown Mooresville, North Carolina, with brick storefronts along Main Street

Close-up of a KeyWatcher Touch key management cabinet with an ICT badge reader

Solving a Real-World Problem: Keys Going Missing

As Mooresville's footprint grew, so did a familiar operational headache: vehicle keys. With a large pool of shared vehicles used by help desk technicians and field staff, keys would go missing with no clear record of who had them or when.

The city tried several solutions before landing on one that made sense: using their existing Protege badges to check out keys through a KeyWatcher key management cabinet, integrated directly into the Protege GX platform. Staff now use the same credential they use every day to check out vehicle keys, with a full audit trail of who has what and for how long.

High-Security Access, City-Wide Control

At the newly renovated Police Department, a former municipal building transformed into a modern law enforcement facility, Mooresville needed a solution for one of its most sensitive spaces: the evidence room. Sage integrated Suprema biometric facial readers with Protege GX, delivering the rigorous access control required for a Grade 4-level environment along with a practical benefit that immediately resonated with staff.

One of the platform's most valued capabilities for Mooresville has been the ability to remotely manage park bathrooms and gates on a scheduled basis. Many comparable municipalities without this capability must send staff out daily to physically lock and unlock facilities. Mooresville doesn't.

The full audit trail and reporting capabilities of Protege GX have also been valuable for facilities management, quickly identifying who was in a building, who may have triggered an alarm or who accessed a restricted area.

KeyWatcher key management cabinet, wall-mounted display and ICT access control reader in a City of Mooresville hallway

An intelligent security system costs less than maintaining constant physical security, and it's significantly increased the speed of response and the level of security.

— Philip Morgart, Operations Manager, Sage Security Solutions

An intelligent security system costs less than maintaining constant physical security, and it's significantly increased the speed of response and the level of security.

— Philip Morgart, Operations Manager, Sage Security Solutions

Products & Services

Protege GX

TSL Bluetooth Readers

The Outcome

Today, the City of Mooresville operates a unified, city-wide security platform that has scaled over two decades, from two employees and one building to a 17-person IT team managing 44 sites and 387 active doors. The Protege GX platform touches every corner of city operations, from who accesses the evidence room at the police department to when the park bathrooms open on a Saturday morning.

Hardware That Lasts

One of the most striking proof points of ICT’s durability is Mooresville’s own infrastructure. Original PCB boards from the initial Protege SE installation, converted to GX during the platform upgrade, are still active at Town Hall today.

Accountability Where There Was None

The KeyWatcher integration has transformed how the city manages its vehicle fleet access. What was once a source of frustration, keys going missing with no clear ownership, is now a transparent, badge-controlled process tracked entirely within the Protege GX platform. Help desk technicians can quickly confirm a vehicle key is available before heading out to a remote site, improving response times and reducing time lost to tracking down missing keys.

A Partnership Built on Trust

After 20 years, the relationship between the City of Mooresville and Sage Security Solutions is built on deep familiarity and genuine collaboration. When Matt Williard raised a concern about schedule management during the interview, wishing it were possible to set one-off door unlock events without a seven-day rolling schedule, Morgart was able to tell him the functionality already exists in Protege GX and offered to walk him through it after the call.

MOORESVILLE, NC, USA

Sage Security Solutions

Sage Security Solutions is a full-service low-voltage integrator based in the Charlotte, NC region, specialising in access control, intrusion detection, fire alarm and camera systems for commercial, municipal and education clients. With Protege GX as their leading platform, Sage has supported the City of Mooresville's security infrastructure for over two decades, growing alongside the city and delivering installations that stand the test of time. Their deep expertise with ICT systems, combined with a hands-on, collaborative approach, makes them a trusted long-term partner for complex, multi-site deployments.

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