'long' distance arduino daisy chain
My approach would be to 


put the LEDs in a matrix (with resistors on one of the axis of course), 
run a continuous flatcable from the arduino and between the LEDs
crimp a flatcable connector onto the cable at each LED position
plug the LED into the fatcable connector (might be a bit unreliable because the LED pins are too thin), or put a boxed header onto the connector and solder the LED onto its pins


An N-wire flatcable and associated connectors can drive (N/2)^2 LEDs in a normal matrix. 10-wire flatcable gives you 25 LEDs, 40-wire is good for 400 LEDs.

Charlieplexing gives you (N-1)^2 LEDs for N wires, but at the expense of more complex software and the requirement that you can not easily use buffers, so I would consider that only as a last resort. 

If in this scheme cable cost would be dominant you could do some clever things with with the cabling so unused cables are not run to the places where they are not needed. More details are needed (number of LEDs, distances) 

If you realy need distributed-drivers approach I would consider the Microchip MCP23017 or MCP23S17. They provide 16 I/O pins (enough for 64 LEDs in a matrix!) via a SPI or I2C intercae. 8 such devices can share a common bus.