The community or neighborhood/district plan serves as a planning document. It can include a survey of an area's existing resources and their condition, traffic or parking studies, and recommendations on how to develop the area's potential. The Center staff works closely with local community leaders, planning offices, and neighborhood groups to establish a focused yet holistic approach that will use a community's historic resources to enhance future progress.

The individual building preservation plans created by the Center for Historic Preservation help individual building owners prepare for restoration, rehabilitation, or renovation projects by creating in-depth surveys of a building's historic, architectural, and artistic elements. Past preservation plans created by the Center have also included a prioritized listing of elements in need of repair and detailed histories of past building uses and owners. One of the Center's recent individual building preservation plans is described below.

Columbia Club, Indianapolis, IN – The Center completed a preservation plan for the 1925 Columbia Club building located on Monument Circle in the center of Indianapolis. A team of two graduate assistants completed the report on the 10-story building as part of a summer internship in 2006. The report included a detailed history of the club organization, a chronology of alterations to the building, a condition assessment, a structural assessment, and a survey of the building's 150 different artistic and architectural features. The Columbia Club Foundation, charged with preserving the 87 year old structure, used the information from the plan to organize restoration and rehabilitation efforts.