Kenosha County, WI Building Setbacks & Zoning: Structure Height Limits (2026)

County Code § 12.32.010(f), Building, Height, Area and Design Standards, provides that 'No building or parts of a building shall exceed 35 feet in height' in the R-1 Rural Residential District, the county's largest-lot single-family district requiring a minimum five-acre lot and 300 feet of frontage. The same 35-foot cap recurs through the county's other residential, cluster and overlay districts, including the R-1/C-2 standards in the Rural Cluster Development Overlay District and the Town Center Overlay District, so 35 feet functions as the county's default residential height ceiling wherever county zoning applies.

This chapter reaches only the unincorporated towns of Kenosha County that have adopted the county zoning ordinance; the City of Kenosha, the City of Lake Geneva, and the villages of Pleasant Prairie, Somers, Paddock Lake, Twin Lakes and Silver Lake all administer their own zoning codes and their own height limits, so a Chapter 12 measurement does not control inside those municipal boundaries.

County Code § 12.38.010 lists specific exceptions the zoning administrator allows above the district height limit unless a conditional use permit under § 12.40 or a historical preservation restriction under § 12.37.020 says otherwise: spires, belfries, steeples, cupolas, domes, parapet walls, chimneys and flues may rise above the limit by no more than their distance from the nearest lot line; radio, television, cellular and digital communication towers face the same distance-based cap unless engineered to collapse within a smaller area; and utility poles, water towers, standpipes and transmission lines are exempt from the height limitation altogether.