The 2016 Groundbreaking

​On the morning of March 18, 2016, Governor Dennis Daugaard stood at 501 North Saint Onge Street in Rapid City and broke ground on a $90 million expansion of the GCC Dacotah cement plant.

Mayor Steve Allender was there. The Associated Press covered it. An international cement industry trade publication covered it. The Governor’s own office issued a press release.

​”Not only is GCC a good corporate citizen, it’s a forward thinking company that’s been in South Dakota for a number of years,” Governor Daugaard said that morning.

​Mayor Allender welcomed the news in terms that left no ambiguity about the city’s awareness. “Construction is a major industry in Rapid City and the region,” he told CemNet, an international industry publication. “It’s very good for Rapid City. We are a growing community; the business confidence is growing. I think that’s positive for all of us.”

​Five months later, Governor Daugaard cited the GCC expansion by name in an official state government column on rail infrastructure, listing it as evidence that South Dakota’s investment in the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad was paying off.

​The state knew. The city knew. The international cement industry knew.

​The zoning map knew nothing.

What the City Did

The city of Rapid City was not a passive observer of the GCC Dacotah expansion. It was an active participant.

​Building permits flowed through the city’s Community Development Department throughout the life of the operation.

In September 2002, the city processed and approved Permit 21414 for an industrial storage building on a 37-acre tract — a structure the county would ultimately value at $844,200.

In February 2016, one month before the gubernatorial groundbreaking ceremony, the city signed off on Permit 160258, a $43,525 demolition of industrial silos and an operations tower.

​Then, between 2016 and 2017, a wave of capital upgrades moved through standard city approval channels — $1,172,797 in equipment overhauls, a $430,000 electrical substation, and the crown jewel: a $9,899,324 solid-state Kiln 6 upgrade. The city reviewed the engineering blueprints. The city collected the fees.

Alternative Fuel Addressed in 2016

​The alternative fuel question was not new in 2026 either.

​The Governor’s own March 18, 2016 press release explicitly described GCC’s plans to burn scrap tires and other waste materials as kiln fuel — framing it as an environmentally conscious innovation. “Subject to final permitting, GCC will review the wide range of available non-hazardous alternative fuels, such as biomass, scrap tires and other waste materials,” the release stated, with Governor Daugaard adding his endorsement of the approach.

​Ten years later, at the June 4, 2026 Planning Commission meeting, Commissioner Eirik Heikes raised tire burning at the facility as a concern — as if it were a discovery. He voted no on the largest parcel.

​The 2016 press release was a public document. It had been sitting on the state government’s own website for a decade.

CP Cement Plant Zoning District

​Vicki Fisher has served as Community Development Director since at least 2016. Her department issued every one of those permits.

In May 2026, she stood before the Legal and Finance Committee and described the new CP Cement Plant Zoning District as a proactive effort to get ahead of problems.

​”That’s clear as mud, isn’t it,” she said — a remark that drew laughter.

​The same department that described the new zoning framework as proactive had issued permits for the facility’s expansion a decade earlier — without updating the zoning map or triggering a reassessment.

What the City Did Not Do

At 26:37 of the June 4, 2026 Planning Commission meeting, Community Development Director Vicki Fisher explained the mechanism that had defined the GCC Dacotah situation for a quarter century.

​”When sold in 2001 the owner could continue on in legal non-conforming status,” Fisher told the commission. “When they wanted to do some improvements they needed a building permit. We could not pursue a building permit because we don’t have a zone.”

Non- Conforming Use

​Non-conforming use is a legal designation that allows a structure or operation predating current zoning rules to continue existing.

It is not, however, a blank check for expansion. Under standard municipal planning practice, a material improvement to a non-conforming use triggers review.

The question of whether that designation holds — or whether the operation has expanded beyond what it was when the clock stopped — is precisely the kind of question a building permit application is supposed to surface.

​The city processed at least four significant permit events between 2002 and 2017. It reviewed engineering blueprints for a $9.9 million kiln upgrade. It signed demolition orders. It collected fees.

​The zoning map was never updated. The Pennington County assessment never moved.

​Carla Cushman was sworn in as Rapid City’s permanent City Attorney on June 2, 2026. She has worked in the city attorney’s office since May 2012. Her office was present and operational through every permit event documented in this report.

The Cost of the Gap

Property taxes in Rapid City flow to multiple entities from the same assessment.

The city. Pennington County. The Rapid City Area School District. Every mill levy applied to an artificially deflated base means all three collected less than the public record suggests they should have.

​Public records show GCC Dacotah’s core industrial parcels have been assessed at $8,000 to $8,500 per acre — a frozen baseline that has not moved through 2024, 2025, or 2026, years in which residential property values across Rapid City were aggressively reassessed upward.

Comparable heavy industrial properties in the same Deadwood Avenue and Sturgis Road corridor — Pete Lien and Sons, Heavy Constructors Inc. — carry assessed values of $35,000 to $40,000 per acre.

​The gap is not subtle. It is not a rounding error. It is a structural feature of how this parcel has been carried on the public books for a quarter century, through multiple administrations, while a $105 million expansion was celebrated at the highest levels of state and city government.

​The residents living adjacent to 563 acres of active mining operations — next to a monastery, a school, senior housing — have absorbed that gap in their own tax bills every year it existed.

​On June 15, the Rapid City City Council takes up the GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances on first reading — the first of two required votes — moving directly from Planning Commission approval to Council without a prior Legal and Finance Committee review.

​That vote is being presented as administrative housekeeping.

​The public record suggests it is something more than that.

A Mandate For Accountability

The questions that record leaves open are ones the Sentinel puts directly to the people of Rapid City — and to the institutions that serve them:

1. Who in city government knew about the 2016 expansion, and what obligation did that knowledge carry?

2. Why did a building permit application in 2026 accomplish what a $105 million gubernatorial groundbreaking in 2016 did not?

3. What does the correct assessment of this property look like — and who is responsible for the difference between that number and what has been collected?

4. And if the zoning vote on June 15 closes the map, who answers for the quarter century the map stayed open?

​This is an ongoing Sentinel investigation.

The post Permitted but Unzoned: How Rapid City’s 25- Year Zoning Gap Survived a $105 Million Expansion appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.