Lakewood Ranch driveways in shell concrete

The district owns the first eleven feet

Lakewood Ranch's first phase is five community development districts: Summerfield and Riverwalk, Country Club South and Edgewater, Greenbrook, Country Club North and Country Club West. The rest of Lakewood Ranch is governed by the Lakewood Ranch Stewardship District. In Country Club and Edgewater, the homeowners' manual says the street right-of-way belongs to the district and typically runs eleven feet back from the kerb, so the apron and the public sidewalk crossing it are on district land, not your lot. Your survey shows exactly where the line falls.

That changes what can be poured where. The same manual does not let an owner change the material, colour or finish of a public sidewalk unless that piece of sidewalk is a continuation of the driveway, and it does not let an owner repair the public walk at all: damage is reported to Town Hall. So the shell finish can carry across the walk where it is part of the drive, and a cracked panel of public walk next to the drive is the district's to fix, not ours.

What the older villages allow on a drive

In Country Club and Edgewater, changing a driveway's material, laying a concrete overlay on it and sealing it each need a Modification Request first. An overlay has to be applied by a professional, in a colour, texture and pattern that suit the house and the neighbourhood. Painting a driveway is not permitted, and a sealer has to come from the association's list of approved colours.

Three neighbourhoods there go further. In Mizner Reserve, Briar Creek and Vilamoura the driveways, walkways and public sidewalks were built in one material with matching colours and the same matte finish, and the manual says they can only be maintained with those finishes. A shell driveway that looks different from the rest of the street is not an option there, and we would rather say so before a sample is ever made.

Esplanade and Cresswind write their own rules

Esplanade's design standards write a wider front-load driveway as a paver extension, only as wide as the wall that holds the garage door, and cap a side-load turnaround at eight feet beyond the original drive and eighteen feet long. Staining needs the committee's approval and must be a solvent-based, semi-transparent stain in the house's colour scheme; sealing needs approval too. Each project is its own application, with the contractor's licence and insurance attached, so a driveway and a pool deck are two requests. Where pavers are what the standards allow, Shellcrete against pavers is the comparison to read first.

Cresswind is stricter about size. Its guidelines allow no extra walking area beside a driveway that widens it, no parking pads, and no painting or staining of concrete paving. That leaves a same-footprint replacement, with any colour coming from the surface itself rather than a coat on top, and a sample of the finish goes in with the request. Neither set of rules names a poured shell surface, which is why we bring the committee a real sample rather than a photograph.

At the street: the County's form

North of University Parkway the apron is Manatee County's. Its driveway and culvert application lists shell as a driveway material, meaning compacted loose shell, and allows no shell aprons next to a paved road. A poured shell finish is concrete, so it is filed as concrete and the form's own wording does not apply to it. The County keeps a residential driveway between twelve and twenty-four feet wide in the right-of-way, six inches thick from the edge of the road to the property line, with an expansion joint against the kerb and at least three feet clear of a catch basin.

On streets drained by swales the County sets the culvert grades itself, and the drive has to stay three feet back from the mitred ends of the pipe. The County inspects the forms before the pour and the sod at the end, and a water meter is not allowed to sit inside the drive, so a meter in the way is moved before the slab is poured. In Waterside, south of the parkway, Sarasota County's right-of-way permit applies instead.

Eleven miles from the yard

Our yard is on 14th Street West in Bradenton, about eleven miles from Lakewood Ranch Main Street, twenty minutes or so in light traffic. That keeps a driveway here ordinary work, and the finish boards close enough to bring to a committee meeting. Behind the house, pool decks in Lakewood Ranch covers who approves a deck and a cage.