Greendale, Wisconsin

Concrete driveways, patios and slabs in Greendale

Greendale draws a line about ten feet in from the street. Your side of it, a like-for-like driveway goes back without a permit. The Village's side of it is permitted, reviewed and inspected. Knowing which side your job sits on is most of the planning.

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Greendale is a short drive northwest of us, and it is the one municipality in our area where the answer to "do I need a permit" genuinely depends on where you stop pouring. It is also the place where roughly a third of the housing was laid out in 1938 to a plan nobody has repeated since, which changes what a patio or a parking pad has to fit around.

Replacing what is there, where it is

The Village's own guidance is unusually plain. An existing legal driveway of concrete or asphalt can be maintained and replaced in its existing location without a permit, provided the scope of work does not affect the driveway approach.

So a driveway that has broken up, heaved or sunk can be taken out and poured again on the same footprint with no application at all, as long as the crew stops short of the right-of-way. The moment the drive gets wider, moves, or picks up a parking pad alongside it, that changes: the Village asks for a permit to add or modify off-street parking.

The approach belongs to the Village

The approach is the portion of the driveway in the right-of-way, which the Village describes as generally the first ten feet in from the street. Removing, replacing or creating one needs a right-of-way driveway approach permit. Section 8.03 of the code puts that permit in the hands of the Director of Inspection Services, on a written application made on Village forms, with the Director of Public Works reviewing each one before it is issued. The contractor pays the permit and inspection fee to the Clerk-Treasurer before anything is dug.

Two more things sit in the same section. The work is done under the Director's jurisdiction and to the plans and specifications kept on file in that office, which is where the dimensions of the approach come from rather than from us. And only one approach is permitted per residence, so a second curb opening for a side pad is not on the table.

Work in the right-of-way also runs on the Village's notice terms: at least two working days' notice before starting, notice again on completion, and any pavement, curb or walk removed goes back to the Village's specification. Inspections of any kind are easier to book three days ahead; the Village says same-day appointments are rarely available.

Width, and where the edge may sit

The Zoning Code sets the dimensions. A driveway serving a one- or two-family home is no more than twenty feet wide within the required front yard, and no more than twenty-five feet where it crosses the right-of-way line. A house with more than two enclosed stalls earns an extra ten feet of width per stall, but only in the thirty feet nearest the house, for turning in and out. Open parking spaces stay at least two and a half feet from the nearest side lot line, and the code wants a compacted base under a permanent wear surface, which concrete is.

Those numbers decide a surprising amount of design. A drive that flares generously at the garage is fine; one that flares generously at the street is not. We measure the required front yard for your zoning district before drawing anything, because the twenty-foot limit is measured inside it.

If you live in an Original

Greendale was built by the federal Resettlement Administration and opened on 1 May 1938: 572 living units in 366 buildings, now a National Historic Landmark. The Village's design guidelines for those homes note that the final plan allowed about 5,000 square feet of yard per dwelling, and that many of the original garages were doubles shared between neighbours, with the centre wall straddling the side lot line. The Zoning Code still provides for exactly that arrangement in Blocks 1 through 60 of the Plat of Greendale Center.

For concrete work the practical point is this. On an Original, an at-grade patio, a walkway, a parking area or another hard-surfaced area needs the Director of Inspection Services' approval, not a Conditional Use Permit before the Plan Commission; the guidelines list it among the smaller changes handled administratively. The Village's Historic Preservation chapter, which requires a Certificate of Appropriateness, names Village Hall, the Hose Tower, Trimborn Farm and the Curtin House rather than the homes. Expect a shared driveway to need a conversation with the neighbour before it needs one with the Village.

Digging that counts as grading

A separate permit, from the same Director, applies where excavation or grading disturbs a quarter of an acre or more, or where cut or fill exceeds one cubic yard for every thousand square feet of lot. A driveway or patio on an ordinary Greendale lot sits comfortably under both, but a sloping yard regraded to take a level patio may not, and starting before the permit doubles the fee.

What that means for your job

A straight replacement of the drive on your own ground is the simplest work we do in Greendale: no application, a date that depends on weather and the diary. A new or widened driveway, or any job that touches the approach, is quoted with the right-of-way end on its own line and the permit lead time built into the date. Patios, walks and slabs behind the house follow the Zoning Code's setbacks and, on an Original, the administrative sign-off above. Repair work, cutting out failed panels and pouring them back, stays on the no-permit side of the line unless the panel is the approach.

The order never changes: four quick questions from you, a measured visit from us that checks the drive against the Village's widths and the ten-foot line, and a plain statement of which parts need paper before anyone names a date.

Related notes

Thinking about more space rather than a like-for-like? Read how a patio is extended without a visible seam, and what moves a patio estimate. For a driveway that has reached the end, what a full replacement involves, stage by stage.

Across the county line of each other: Franklin, Cudahy and South Milwaukee. Or start at Oak Creek concrete.