The Chickasaw neighborhood in west Louisville has been solidified as a historic preservation district.
Louisville Metro Council voted in favor of the designation at its Sept. 25 meeting, after more than a year of work by neighborhood residents. With final approval, the district will now form a seven-member architectural review committee that will be charged with devising design review guidelines for the area.
Those guidelines are used to determine whether exterior alterations to a property, including demolition and new construction, are appropriate for the district.
The new district plans to adopt the Clifton Historic District’s guidelines in the interim as the community works to develop its own set, Savannah Darr, a historic preservation officer with the Louisville Metro Office of Planning, previously told The Courier Journal. The interim guidelines take effect 30 days after the council approved the district, according to local law.
The permanent guidelines will ultimately be approved by the Historic Landmarks and Preservation Districts Commission and Metro Council and cannot be finalized without first hosting public hearings.
“They want to figure out through further public engagement what they want to review, how stringent they may or may not want to be,” Darr said. “Those are really the guidelines in place that will dictate what the process looks like in the future and what rules the property owners need to follow in the district.”
If an application to make an exterior change is approved, the property owner will receive a certificate of appropriateness, meaning the project can move forward — subject to other applicable regulations. If it is denied, the work cannot proceed, though there is an appeals process.
The Chickasaw Preservation District is bordered by West Broadway to the north; the Ohio River to the west; Winnrose Way, Fordson Way and Colmar Drive to the south; and Louis Coleman Jr. Drive to the east. This map is courtesy of the Historic Landmarks and Preservation Districts Commission.
Chickasaw preservation district designation follows neighborhood effort
The Metro Council approval makes Chickasaw Louisville’s eighth local preservation district, along with West Main Street, Limerick, Old Louisville, Cherokee Triangle, Parkland, Butchertown and Clifton.
The spark to earn the designation was ingited while the neighborhood worked toward earning a spot on the National Register of Historic Places — a process that was finalized in 2024, Darr said.
The Chickasaw Neighborhood Federation led the charge, motivated by a desire to give the neighborhood a concrete preservation mechanism. While placement on the National Register of Historic Places offers residents some financial incentives for historic preservation, it is mostly symbolic.
“As that started to pick up, our conversations in our general meetings were, ‘This is great, but what does it do?’ And as we analyzed that more, we wanted to consider what some other neighborhoods had in place that seemed to offer greater protection for a neighborhood, like vibe and character and architectural respect,” said Ameerah Granger, president of the Chickasaw Neighborhood Federation.
In August 2024, the neighborhood group completed the first step to establish a local preservation district: filing a petition with at least 200 verified signatures from residents of the proposed district.
With the designation official, the neighborhood’s attention now shifts toward establishing the design review guidelines — a process Granger said residents are encouraged to engage in.
“There’s a lot of work to do, but it’s really a time for the community to come together and to get to know one another,” Granger said. “This is just a time I think neighbors can kind of come together more to talk about memories of the neighborhood, to help with storytelling and collection of those stories, as well as getting information and sharing information.”
Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins, whose district touches part of the preservation district, applauded the designation for giving residents a voice in how the neighborhood is shaped for years to come.
“I am glad that the hard work from the residents of Chickasaw paid off. With this neighborhood being recognized on a national level it only makes sense for Metro to assist and move forward with the preservation district. This allows a body of stakeholders to decide what they want in their neighborhood,” Hawkins wrote in a statement. “Chickasaw is full of history and we should always be ready to assist in preserving history.”
Contact reporter Killian Baarlaer at kbaarlaer@gannett.com or @bkillian72 on X.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Chickasaw becomes historic preservation district with Metro Council OK