Normally, altering a driveway configuration in the front yard of a home in a residential neighborhood on the North Shore would draw scant attention and interest from the broader public.
However, when it’s one of the Chicago area’s single best-known residential properties — the iconic “Home Alone” mansion in Winnetka that was the setting for the very popular 1990 holiday classic movie with that name — returning a driveway configuration to its original layout, which was the one filmed in the movie as the McCallister family departs for O’Hare International Airport in two Airport Express vans, is more than a perfunctory matter.
In January 2025, a buyer bought the “Home Alone” mansion from longtime owners Timothy and Trisha Johnson for $5.5 million. In buying the mansion, the new owner used a Delaware limited liability company whose name, Mikallister LLC, is a clear riff on the surname of the McCallister family in the movie.” Throughout 2025, the new owners replaced the Georgian-style brick home’s water heater, installed a new backup generator and undertook a sanitary sewer replacement, according to village documents.
Because hundreds of visitors come to the mansion each day, around 2013, the Johnsons had installed a metal picket fence along the home’s front lot line, aimed at keeping onlookers on the public sidewalk, instead of on private property. Then, around 2017, the Johnsons renovated the mansion, including its interior and the rear of the home. As part of that project, they removed the well-known horseshoe-style driveway to avoid triggering a village requirement to provide on-site stormwater detention given an increase in overall impervious area on the property.
In removing the half-circle driveway, however, the owners lost what had been a grandfathered, legally non-conforming level of impervious coverage in the front yard that had exceeded the village’s code limits.
Now, the current owner of the home is asking Winnetka officials to re-allow the horseshoe driveway. To do so requires a front-yard impervious coverage variation, and Winnetka’s zoning board will take its first look at his proposal at a meeting on Jan. 12. In a narrative submitted to Winnetka officials, representatives of the home’s current owner, from landscape firm Midwest Arbor Corporation, noted that the property currently uses a single-lane asphalt driveway serving a rear-entry garage, and the driveway extends more than 150 feet from the street to the rear of the garage. While it’s difficult for most vehicles to turn around without opening the home’s garage doors, it’s downright impossible for delivery vehicles to do so. With onlookers gawking at the mansion at all hours of the day and night, the long driveway is a safety hazard, according to the narrative, as many vehicles must back out of the driveway into the street.
A restored, paved half-circle driveway in the front yard — behind the existing metal fence and gates — would allow vehicles to enter and exit facing forward, representatives of the home’s current owner wrote.
“The requested variation is thus driven not by aesthetic preference or resale value, but by site-specific functional and safety requirements in the context of an internationally recognized filming location that generates sustained pedestrian activity,” according to the narrative. “This particular property is uniquely burdened by regular tourist foot traffic and frequent on-street stopping associated with its longstanding identity as the ‘Home Alone’ house.”
Lori Nieman, the real estate agent who represented the current owners in their January 2025 purchase, declined to comment.
In December, WMAQ-Channel 5 reported that the “Home Alone” mansion’s current owner was planning to restore the interior to match its appearance in the movie. There are no permits on file with the village of Winnetka for such work just yet, and a project manager quoted in that story, Scott Price, declined to provide a project timeline. However, in speaking with NBC 5, Price, who did not respond to a request for comment, did allude to upcoming improvements to the outside of the house. The possible return of the mansion’s half-circle driveway — an enduring image from the film — would seem to be a first step toward returning the mansion and its property to an earlier appearance.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.