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

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

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

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 (pdf)
    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 (pdf)
    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 (pdf)
    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.