Driveway Repair and Widening in Midwest City, OK

Midwest City was planned before it was built. W.P. Bill Atkinson bought the land on speculation that an air depot was coming, and the city was incorporated on March 11, 1943, named for the Midwest Air Depot that became Tinker Air Force Base. Seward Mott of the Federal Housing Administration's land-planning division helped design it, and it became a national model for postwar community development. Thousands of modest homes went up quickly for base workers and returning veterans. The drives poured for them in the 1940s and 1950s are still in service on many streets, now 70 to 80 years old.

Those original drives share three traits. They are narrow, usually single-car width, because a household then had one car. They are thin, typically 4 inches or less with little or no reinforcement. And their joints are wood or nothing at all, so water has been reaching the clay underneath for decades. A worn-out drive here is usually a full replacement, and replacement is the natural moment to widen it. Widening a single-car drive or adding a side parking pad, doweled into the new slab, is one of the most practical upgrades for a Midwest City home, especially where the household now parks on the grass.

Two other things shape the work. Midwest City has a large rental stock: 45.6% of occupied homes in 2020. Landlords need drives that pass inspection and repairs scheduled between tenants. And parts of the city were rebuilt after the May 3, 1999 tornado, which did high-end F4 damage northwest of Tinker, and after the F4 of May 8, 2003, so some neighborhoods have drives from around 2000 next to originals from 1950. Midwest City issues its own permits for approach work, and we confirm them before scheduling any work that reaches the street.