Cudahy, Wisconsin

Concrete driveways, patios and slabs in Cudahy

Cudahy closes its right-of-way to work for four months of the year. If any part of your job touches the strip at the street, that single fact matters more than every price you are about to be quoted.

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We pour across the south suburbs and Cudahy is the one where the calendar, not the budget, most often decides what happens. Worth reading before you start collecting quotes, because the timing question has a hard edge here that it does not have next door.

The four months nothing happens at the road

Straight from the City, in its own words: "There is a moratorium on work in the City's Right-of-Way between December 1st and April 1st unless it is an emergency (i.e. sewer collapse)."

That is a third of the year during which your approach cannot be rebuilt, your public walk cannot be replaced, and nothing else in that strip gets touched unless something has actually failed.

Two consequences worth planning around.

Work backwards from the first of December, not forwards from today. A job that misses the cut-off does not move by a couple of weeks, it moves to April. Autumn is the point at which that stops being theoretical, and it is why quotes taken in September are worth more here than quotes taken in November.

The moratorium is about the right-of-way, not your garden. A patio, a garage slab, a path behind the property line: none of that is governed by it, weather permitting. So a Cudahy homeowner who wants both should expect the back-garden half to be far easier to schedule than the half at the street.

Replacing an apron is permitted work

The City names replacing your driveway apron or public sidewalk in its list of work needing the correct Public Works permit, alongside water and sewer laterals, putting a dumpster in the road, and development projects.

Worth saying plainly, because the usual assumption runs the other way: putting back what was already there is not treated as maintenance. If a bidder has not mentioned the permit, they have not accounted for the sequence either.

Questions about the permit process go to Public Works on 414-769-2212.

Who is allowed to work in the right-of-way

Cudahy attaches two things to right-of-way work beyond the permit itself: a Contractor's License and insurance requirements, with the application material going to the Engineering Department.

We are not going to put numbers on either of those here, because the conditions live in documents the City publishes and they should be read from the City rather than paraphrased by a contractor. What matters to you is simpler: ask a bidder whether they are licensed for right-of-way work in Cudahy, before they come out. Somebody who works here answers in a sentence.

Engineering, not Inspection

The department that owns this work is Engineering. The City lists driveway approaches with streets, sidewalks, pavement, storm sewer and private site development grading and drainage plans as Engineering responsibilities.

A small thing that saves a wasted phone call, and a slightly larger thing if your project changes drainage: grading and drainage plans sit with the same department, so a driveway that alters where water goes is a conversation with people who are already looking at your street.

What we lay in Cudahy

• Concrete driveways, with the road end planned around the winter closure rather than into it.
• Concrete patios, walks and sitting areas, which sit behind the property line and schedule far more freely.
• Concrete repair, including apron replacement, which is permitted work here.
• Garage and shed slabs, and steps.

How a Cudahy job runs

Reading before you commit

• what a driveway costs here, and why the approach is its own line
• whether yours wants replacing or only repairing
• a replacement priced in the order it happens