The City of Richmond is not part of Henrico or Chesterfield. It is an independent city, which in Virginia means it runs its own streets, its own permits and its own business licensing, separate from the counties around it. This page covers the neighbourhoods we work in, what the older city does to a driveway, and the rules that apply once a job reaches the curb.
Mailing addresses that say Richmond reach well beyond the city limits. Short Pump Town Center, for one, gives its address as West Broad Street, Richmond, and sits in Henrico County. For a homeowner that is more than trivia, because the city line decides who you ask before an entrance is rebuilt and which business license a contractor needs. If you are not sure which side of the line you are on, your real estate tax bill will say, and so will we once we have the address. County residents will find their rules on the Henrico and Chesterfield pages.
The Fan and the Museum District, Church Hill, the Near West End and Windsor Farms, Northside from Bellevue to Ginter Park, and south of the river through Forest Hill, Westover Hills, Woodland Heights and Manchester. Churches, small offices and shops with a lot behind them are welcome too. If your street is not named here, send it anyway.
A great deal of Richmond's housing is older than the car. The Fan Area Historic District, listed by the state, covers nearly a hundred city blocks and more than two thousand buildings from around the turn of the twentieth century, and the houses on Monument Avenue went up between then and about 1930. Streets like those were laid out for walking and carriages, so parking was added later wherever it would fit: a pad at the back of the lot, a strip beside the house, a shared drive between two neighbours.
Those small surfaces are mostly edges and corners, which makes them hand work. Brick, fences, porches, garden beds and the neighbour's side of a shared drive all sit within inches of the asphalt, and a careless crew leaves sealer on every one of them. Old pads also tend to have been patched several times by several owners, so part of the quote is working out which patches are sound and which need cutting out before anything is sealed.
Richmond sits on the fall line of the James, where the higher Piedmont drops to the Coastal Plain, and the river runs over Class IV rapids right beside downtown. The city's James River Park System stretches about 600 acres along it, from Huguenot Flatwater to Ancarrow's Landing. The land climbs away from the water on both banks, which gives some neighbourhoods sloping lots and steep drives.
A steep drive sheds rain fast, which is good for the base, but the water picks up speed on the way down and scours the low end, the edges and wherever it crosses a joint. Those are the spots we look at first on a sloped drive, and sealer on a slope has to be put down in a way that does not run before it sets.
Anything in the public right-of-way inside the city goes through the Department of Public Works, Right-of-Way Management. Its Work in Streets permit lists driveways and carriage walks among the work it covers. To apply, a contractor sends a certificate of insurance, its contractor's license details, a site plan, a traffic control plan and the fee. The fee schedule the city links sets out a $75 application fee plus $50 per residential driveway or $150 per commercial driveway. That schedule dates from 2019, so the current figure is confirmed with the city and written on your quote.
Separately, the city expects anyone doing business in Richmond to hold a Richmond business license, renewed every year, and asks contractors for their state license or an exemption form and a workers' compensation certificate when they apply.
What that means for your job: entrance and carriage walk work is only booked when the paving contractor doing it can pull the city permit, and if not, you are told and the rest of the job is quoted without it. For sealing and crack filling that stays on your own lot, no permit is involved, and if a job would reach past your property line we ask the city first rather than guess.
No. It is an independent city. Henrico wraps around its north side and Chesterfield sits across the river to the south, but neither has any say over city streets or city permits.
Yes, with a clean line down the middle, though a shared drive usually looks and wears better done in one go. If both households want it, each can have its own quote.
Often yes, since a small pad is quick to seal. The one price per square foot applies, and you get the figure before anyone arrives.
Around the city: Henrico County to the north, east and west, Chesterfield County across the James, and Hanover County beyond Henrico.
