Designating a Local Historic District

The Georgia Historic Preservation Division and with our partners have developed and compiled a number of resources to assist the public with questions pertaining to the process of designating a local historic district.

How to Designate a Local District

• Step by Step Guide for locally designating historic property or historic districts
  Follow this guide prepared by HPD and the Georgia Alliance of Preservation Commissions
• A Model Historic Preservation Ordinance
  The model can be easily adapted for use by any municipal or county government. It is already in compliance with the Georgia Historic Preservation Act.
• Statement of Significance
  An example "Statement of Significance" shows what should be included in the historic preservation commission's report to the local governing board. This is also the information that is sent to the Historic Preservation Division 30 days prior to designation. This process is derived from the Georgia Historic Preservation Act.

If you're ready to start a design review, you need design review guidelines:

• Preparing Design Guidelines for a Historic District
• Model Design Guidelines

Once you've designated local districts, and written design guidelines, the following procedural items may be helpful:

• Sample Staff Recommendation
• Sample HPC Agenda
• Sample HPC Decision
• Sample District Notification letter
• Sample Public Hearing letter

Additional Resources

• Introduction to Robert's Rules of Order
  Robert's Rules of Order is the established set of rules for conduct at meetings that allows everyone to be heard and to make decisions without confusion.
• Guide to Historic Preservation Commission Meetings
  Developed by two national HPC trainers, this guide is to help HPC Chairs and staff structure public meetings on COA applications to ensure that decisions are made defensibly.
• How To Make a Motion
  This page can be used to develop a Motion Sheet for your HPC which will help structure decisions concerning Certificate of Appropriateness applications. The HPC's decisions should be properly tied to the standards in your ordinance and your design guidelines in order to be legally defensible.
• Problems Facing Historic District Commissions
  Despite a rapidly growing body of law dealing with the powers of local historic preservation commissions, there are troubling hints that in many communities existing commissions do not (because they cannot) do an adequate job of protecting local resources. There may be several reasons for such a problem.