The group has over 1,700 members on its Facebook page. The casino would bring between 4,000 and 5,000 jobs to the area, but some have been taking a stand against its arrival and all they say will come with it.Īdam Forcade founded the King's Mountain Awareness Group (KMAG) to oppose the casino after officials with the Catawba Indian Nation submitted the application to the BIA over two years ago.
Nearly 2,000 people from Kings Mountain - a small town on the Carolinas' border just west of Gastonia that sits closest to the proposed casino site - and the surrounding areas have signed a petition calling for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to approve the land-to-trust application for 16 acres of land that would allow the tribe to build a casino there. Meanwhile, residents living around the potential site disagree about whether the casino's impact will be positive or negative for those living around it.
While the Catawba Indian Nation hopes to begin construction on a multi-million-dollar movie studio just south of Charlotte in the coming months, a proposed casino project a little further down the border remains in limbo as the Nation waits for approval from the federal government.