Millcreek's public planning map had run as an ArcGIS Experience Builder application with a custom Nearmap imagery widget. It had about 45,000 views each year. Esri plans to retire the classic custom widget type in early 2027. The code-first route in Experience Builder also covers only the widgets, not the page layout. The map needed a new base before the old one stopped working.
The new Millcreek Planning Map went live on September 1, 2026. It is a single-page application on the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript, with Esri's Calcite design system for the controls.
What a visitor can do
- Find a place by address or parcel number.
- Turn layers on and off, and read the legend.
- Open Near me for a list of parks, bus stops, flood zones, and the garbage collection day.
- Compare two dates of Nearmap aerial imagery.
- Copy a link that keeps the position, the layers, and the imagery date.
- Measure, draw, see an elevation profile, and print.
The layers are in eight groups: reference, administrative boundaries, planning and zoning, service districts, hydrology, geology, transportation, and demographics. The planning group includes zoning maps from 1979 to 2004 as scanned images, so a visitor can see how the zoning changed.
How it is built
I designed and built the application. The code is plain TypeScript with no framework, built with Vite. The map content is one ArcGIS Online web map. Planning staff can add or change a layer in that web map, and the change appears without a new release of the application.
The Nearmap imagery code came from the old widget. It handles the tile grid, the zoom levels, and the lookup of capture dates. It now runs in the browser inside the new map, with the same controls that visitors already knew.
The state of the view is kept in the page address. A shared link opens the same place, the same layers, and the same imagery date. An automated axe accessibility check runs at five screen sizes, and it must pass before a release.
A map is not the only route
The map canvas cannot be used with a keyboard alone. The layer list and the search box can. The welcome screen also links to the Property Lookup, which gives the same property facts as text.
Limits
- The map is for planning. It is not a survey, and it is not a legal decision about a property line.
- The manual screen reader test is not complete.
- There are no viewer numbers for the new map yet.
Use the live map: Millcreek Planning Map. It is also listed on the Millcreek GIS Hub.