The unpaved lane in front of a Windermere home is Town right-of-way, and so is the strip between the edge of the road and your property line. Putting anything there, a new driveway, a replacement apron, an irrigation line, landscaping, takes a Right of Way Use Agreement from Public Works: a $75 application fee, a separate $50 inspection fee, three copies of a site plan, and for a driveway, culvert and swale detail prepared by an engineer or surveyor licensed in Florida. Whatever you install stays yours to maintain, and the Town can require it removed or relocated at your expense.
The town line decides which rules apply
Incorporated Windermere is small, 2.2 square miles by the Town’s own description, and that line decides which government you deal with. Inside it, the Town is the road authority and the permitting authority for work in its right-of-way. Outside it, the road is an Orange County or private responsibility and a driveway connection runs through the county’s own driveway review instead. The same split runs through the market figures published under the Windermere name, which track the ZIP rather than the municipal limits. Settle which side a specific parcel sits on before reading any rule below as applying to it.
The lane and its shoulders belong to the Town
Public Works, at 614 Main Street, Building 200, handles stormwater maintenance and construction, street maintenance and maintenance of Town-owned property, and it is the office that takes Right of Way Use Agreement applications and tree removal applications. The counter is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 3:30 pm, closed from noon to 1:00 pm.
Two things that look like Town business are not. Streetlights and other power problems go to Duke Energy directly at 1-800-700-8744. And building permits are not processed at Town Hall: Windermere runs them through two outside firms, PDCS, LLC in Orlando and Wade Trim in Tampa, and the Town states that permits are not sent to the Town office by default unless a pickup location is requested.
What a Right of Way Use Agreement costs and requires
The application covers nine categories of work: new driveway, driveway repair, landscaping, irrigation, underground utility, overhead utility, stormwater discharge, wireless facility and other. A wireless facility stops the form cold, because the Town requires a pre-application meeting before an application may be submitted at all. Everything else moves through one packet.
| Item | What the Town’s application requires |
|---|---|
| Application fee | $75, by check, submitted with the packet |
| Inspection fee | $50, a separate check, submitted with the packet |
| Reinspection fee | An additional $50 may be assessed if the initial inspection fails; not due at application |
| Site plan | Three copies of a site plan or survey showing the proposed work in the right-of-way |
| Photographs | Images of existing conditions at the location of the proposed work |
| Traffic control | A temporary traffic control plan keyed to an FDOT index, if Town staff request one |
| Signatures | A signed applicant acknowledgment, and Town approval signed by both the Town Manager and the Public Works Director |
Read the acknowledgment before signing it. The applicant agrees to be bound by Town ordinances, specifications and regulations and by any special conditions the Town Manager or a designee imposes, agrees to properly maintain and repair the installation at all times, and indemnifies the Town against claims arising from the work. All installations are subject to removal or relocation at the applicant’s expense, as determined solely by the Town. Under those terms a paver apron carries a permanent maintenance obligation attached to the property, with the Town holding the right to make you move it.
Two scheduling rules matter on a lane this narrow. Public Works must be contacted 24 hours ahead for the pre-pour and the final inspection, and under the conditions the Town attaches to utility work, construction activity in the right-of-way is limited to 9:00 am through 3:00 pm, Monday to Friday, unless the permit says otherwise.
A driveway on an unpaved street is a drainage job
An unpaved lane does not drain through curb and gutter. It drains into roadside swales and ditches, and a driveway crossing one becomes part of that system. So the Town’s special conditions require a site plan prepared by an engineer or surveyor licensed in the State of Florida, showing upstream and downstream culvert sizes, or driveway elevations, or the cross-section of the swale or ditch, plus the proposed right-of-way construction, its material, and the direction of roadside drainage and flow.
The rest is specific enough to price:
- The driveway culvert must be ACCMP, aluminum or RCP, fitted with mitered end sections.
- Construction follows the five pages of driveway engineering specifications attached to the application.
- Pre-pour and final inspections are both required.
- Swales must be regraded for proper flow afterward, apron runoff directed to existing catch basins, and lot drainage kept onsite within the property boundaries.
- Every disturbed area in the right-of-way must be restored and sodded before the final inspection passes.
- No driveway may be built within 5 feet of a side property line, or within 40 feet of a right-of-way intersection.
Surface choice changes the specification rather than avoiding it. Pavers must be architectural grade meeting ASTM C902, with manufacturer certification submitted before construction, and where the design has no sidewalk the apron follows FDOT Section 526 of the Standard Specifications for Road and Bridge Construction. One clause catches owners on a lane that has already been paved: where a paver driveway connects to a paved roadway, the apron from the edge of pavement to the property line must be fiber-mesh reinforced concrete at 3,000 psi over compacted soil. A concrete driveway apron carries that same 3,000 psi fiber-mesh requirement plus a saw cut at the edge of the road for a proper connection.
Will the dirt road be paved?
The Town handles that street by street, through plans and public workshops rather than a standing program, and posts the record on a Dirt Roads project page. That page carries the Old Main Street paving project from 45 percent plans in September 2021 through updated 90 percent roadway and water main plans in September 2022, a W 5th Avenue and Forest Street road improvements presentation from December 2022, a public input workshop for each project, and a Town Council agenda from January 2023.
What the page does not contain is a town-wide paving schedule or any list of which lanes come next. Paving reaches a specific address through its own plan set, workshop and Council action, each a public record you can request from the Town Clerk. Treat a seller’s or a neighbor’s expectation about paving as an expectation until you have found the plan.
What to settle before you close
- Confirm from the parcel record whether the address is inside the 2.2-square-mile town limits or in unincorporated Orange County, because that answer changes every rule above.
- Walk the frontage and find the existing culvert and swale. A collapsed or undersized culvert becomes your engineering problem the moment you want to touch the apron.
- Ask Public Works whether a Right of Way Use Agreement exists for the property and whether what is standing in the right-of-way was ever permitted.
- Price a driveway or apron replacement with the engineered site plan, the culvert, the regrading and the sod included, not as a paving quote.
- Ask the Town Clerk whether any paving or drainage plan set covers the street, and read the workshop minutes rather than a summary of them.
- If the canopy figures in your plans, price the tree work separately. Windermere is a Tree City USA community, its Land Development Code governs tree removal and protection, and Public Works takes those applications on its Tree Removal Notice Form.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 34786 address the same as being in the Town of Windermere?
No. The Town describes incorporated Windermere as 2.2 square miles, and its own Tree Board membership rule draws the line explicitly: residents inside those 2.2 square miles may serve as voting members, while people in unincorporated Orange County holding a 34786 address may apply only as non-voting Ex Officio members. The mailing address says nothing about whether the Town or Orange County is your road authority, permitting authority or code enforcement office. The parcel record settles that question.
Who repairs washouts and ruts in the lane itself?
Street maintenance and stormwater maintenance are both listed Public Works duties inside the town limits, so the road surface is the Town’s work rather than the adjoining owners’. That is the practical difference between a Town-maintained unpaved street and a private road, where the cost falls on the owners who use it. The obligation that does transfer to you is narrower: anything you were permitted to install in the right-of-way, an apron, pavers, landscaping, irrigation, you agreed to maintain and repair at all times.
Do I need Town approval to put in landscaping or an irrigation line near the street?
If the work falls inside the right-of-way, yes. Landscaping and irrigation are both named categories on the Right of Way Use Agreement application, carrying the same $75 application fee and $50 inspection fee as a driveway. The reason to file rather than guess sits in the acknowledgment you sign: installations in the right-of-way may be ordered removed or relocated at your expense, and an unpermitted one has no standing at all.
Where to go from here
If you are still weighing the corridor itself, start with the full corridor guide at Live Move Orlando’s Windermere guide, which compares the area against its neighbors. For how a municipal boundary reshapes services and approvals, our breakdown of what changes inside city limits works the same problem in another West Orange town.
When you want the frontage, the drainage and the offer priced as one decision, book a strategy session with our team at mvphomegroup.com/nelsoncruz. On an unpaved street the condition of the right-of-way is negotiating material, and it is cheaper to settle before closing than after.
Nelson Cruz, P.A.
Founder & CEO
MVP Home Group, Real Broker LLC
Nelson brings nearly two decades in law enforcement to his work in real estate. View Nelson’s profile or contact our team at 407-901-9939 or [email protected].
Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration of a narrow unpaved sand and clay residential lane with tire ruts, running under a live oak canopy, with a mown grass drainage swale along the shoulder and the corrugated metal end of a culvert pipe set into the swale at a driveway apron. Not a particular property, street or community.