CELEBRATED landscape architect David Rubin was speaking at a design conference at the Cummins Global Distribution Headquarters in 2018 when he said what all the high-powered creatives in attendance there were thinking: Indianapolis has gotten a lot cooler in the last 10 years.
Local architect Donna Sink stood up. “I just want to point out that People for Urban Progress is celebrating our 10th anniversary. I think you have PUP to thank,” she said. Sink is a longtime board member for PUP, the Indianapolis nonprofit behind a popular collection of handbags and accessories made from salvaged materials from the RCA Dome. The startup became Indy-famous when it saved the Colts’ former home’s fabric roof from a landfill and began upcycling it from a gritty Fountain Square studio. Locals loved that they could own a piece of Indy nostalgia remade with a modern design aesthetic, and the sensible do-gooder story played well, too. Every hip person in town had one of the boxy white totes or wallets.
That was just the beginning. After saving the roof material from the demolished dome in 2008, PUP founder Michael Bricker grew the organization into much more than a product line. Focused on sustainability and civic design, PUP called itself a “do-tank” and used bag sales (priced from $42 for a wallet to $144 for a duffel bag) to fund community projects like artful bus shelters and urban garden canopies. In the process, PUP established itself as the vanguard of all things forward-thinking and fab-looking in Indianapolis.
Bricker was also first in line when other local treasures were up for grabs, like the seats in Bush Stadium and Hinkle Fieldhouse, which were saved based on ideas from PUP employees. PUP turned the Bush Stadium seats into bus stop perches (called PUPstops) and sold the Hinkle seats to fund its work, making PUP a local darling known for its fresh ideas at a time when Indy was all about them—the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, handsome bars like the now-closed Libertine with its pioneering drinks and mixologists in vests, the downtown condo boom, the rebirth of Fountain Square, and all the energy and optimism Indy channeled into hosting the hell out of Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. “It was in the air at the time,” Bricker says. “It was the end of the housing crisis. A lot of people had lost their jobs, and they started thinking, What’s my skill set? What can I make happen? When you look at a lot of organizations in Indianapolis that are still around, a lot of them started between 2008 and 2011, and we were in that group.”
Photos provided by Jessica Bricker
In its role as do-tank, PUP did more than its fan base realized, namely driving a conversation around design that reached beyond Indy. The Rubin talk was part of a PUP-sponsored series of events called Daylight, for which thought leaders like Rubin (originally from Philadelphia) and Detroit city planner Maurice Cox had come from around the country to talk about urban design and the “built environment”—buildings, parks, streetscapes, and all the elements that make up a city. The Daylight symposium, as well as a follow-up Season Two focused on equity in design, were signs that PUP was growing up.
But six years later, PUP is located on the quiet Central State campus on the west side, having moved from Fountain Square in 2017. It hasn’t installed a new bus stop or other community project since 2019 and hasn’t made a blog post since 2020. There is only one RCA Dome product still for sale online, a credit card holder, and the bags have mostly disappeared from local stores. And the Dome fabric is almost out.
Which has made some trend trackers wonder how PUP—a company founded on the concept of sustainability—will find new life for itself.
THREAD OF AN IDEA
Michael Bricker had a lot on his mind the summer of 2008 when he returned to Indianapolis from Austin, where the Wabash College alum had earned a graduate degree in architecture at the University of Texas. His mother had passed unexpectedly, and he was dealing with arrangements and grieving with his twin sister, Jessica.
One thing broke through the fog: the site of the RCA Dome demolition as he drove past it downtown. Architects are fascinated with raw materials. Bricker wondered what the roof was made of and what would happen to it. He asked around and learned that it was going to a landfill east of Indianapolis.
What a waste, Bricker thought. “Purchased new, it would have cost millions of dollars,” he says of the thick white thermoplastic material that had been held aloft by internal air pressure. The new airport’s parking garage roof was in the process of being constructed from the same stuff, so it wasn’t an obsolete product. Bricker wondered if someone could do better.
So he pushed. He called city leaders. He tracked down the project management company. “I threatened to make some noise about it,” he says. “Everyone wanted to just not deal with it.”
The demolition company, though, was cooperative. It wouldn’t take much more work to cut it down in sheets than to rip it apart with a big metal claw. The project managers agreed to let Bricker have it if he would haul it away. He enlisted Indy Parks, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, and the Indianapolis Water Company to help with transportation and storage. Some of it was stashed at KIB, and some went into a warehouse near Eli Lilly’s headquarters downtown. Eco-mission to save the material from landfill accomplished.
Now what?
Bricker wanted to use it to make shade structures for Indy Parks, but they weren’t interested in funding the work. Instead, he bought a sewing machine and played around. The material was pliable enough to work with. He came up with the idea for bags, formed a nonprofit, and dove in with one partner (a friend, Maryanne O’Malley, who would soon step away). They power-washed the fabric in his backyard, cut it, sewed square bags and wallets, and got Silver in the City on Mass Ave to sell them. PUP was born—a scrappy startup working with literal scraps.
The story of preserving a piece of Indy’s sports legacy scored big, and the minimalist designs were high-quality, the roof material proving nearly indestructible. “It’s one of
our favorite things to take down and touch and talk about. It’s one of the best stories that we have in the store,” says Silver in the City owner Kristin Kohn.
But it was never easy. Even KIB, a willing but strapped nonprofit ally, threw away some Dome material when it was cleaning house at one point. Bricker and his partner dove into the dumpster and hauled it away in his Jeep Cherokee. Eight years in, PUP found a semi trailer full of Dome fabric that Indy Parks had stored at the old airport after its demolition and, in an ironic twist, had to buy the material back from the city.
From donated studio space in Fountain Square, Bricker bootstrapped enough to hire a few sewers and expand the line to about 20 bag styles. (According to Sink, PUP has always employed stitchers, “the people who make the bags,” on a per-piece basis.) The First Friday crowd came through the Fountain Square shop regularly, and the bags found a powerful fan in Brian Payne, president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation and the visionary behind the transformational Cultural Trail. Payne was able to toss some dollars PUP’s way. A big break came when PUP was one of four local makers featured in a pop-up shop called Outpost during the Super Bowl.
By then, PUP had gained enough street cred to participate in civic projects, like contributing stadium seats to area bus stops, and to make a play for the NFL’s Super Bowl banners that were hung up around downtown in February 2012. Two days before game kickoff, Bricker got the green light and rode around in a golf cart with an NFL rep to survey the mother lode of material. Even after seeing it, Bricker was floored when the shipment arrived—41 pallets of dirty vinyl stashed at the Circle City Industrial Complex, now the Factory Arts District.
The Super Bowl banners gave PUP some fresh PR and a new look. Locals could buy shower curtains with XLVI imagery, and the colorful fabric was mixed with a little Dome material to create the Referee drawstring backpack, a budget-friendly bestseller at $56. The rest was cut up for accent fabric on Dome bags.
Bricker’s ambitions matched the city’s drive to chase a Super Bowl. He envisioned PUP chapters in other cities and an online store, perhaps, selling all products with backstories like the Dome bag. People would know the idea came from Indianapolis. He pitched the idea to local leaders, hoping they would help fund his vision to brand Indy as a place that values sustainability, craftsmanship, and innovative thinking. “It’s such a good idea that still no one is really doing,” Bricker says.
Photos provided by Jessica Bricker
As part of PUP’s focus on sustainability, Bricker also wanted to consult on material use in construction and architecture, as he did for IUPUI when they were removing redwood from a building. PUP’s report included the value of the material, an assessment of its usability, and ways to reuse it. “I think if you’re getting money from the city, it should be required that somebody comes in [during demolition] and studies the use of that material and how it could go back into the community,” Bricker says. “That’s how I was trying to position us. That was going to be a big part of our next chapter.”
But funding for such a specific kind of service was also hard to secure, Bricker says, because PUP didn’t fit any existing categories of green causes. “We’re not workforce development. We’re not traditional recycling. We’re not energy-based,” he says. “I felt like the city loved to tell our story and take a little credit for our success but didn’t really want to help us grow.”
Eventually he became disillusioned with his bigger dreams for PUP and decided to dedicate his energy to his other career. Today, he’s a successful production designer living in Brooklyn and won an Emmy for his work on the Netflix series Russian Doll. There are no hard feelings. “I still feel strongly about what we did,” he says, “and hopefully what the organization is still doing.”
CURRENT STITCH
Don’t fret. PUP is healthy. It’s still operating. In fact, it’s doing well.
As many of us do as we mature into middle age, PUP has transitioned to something more stable and manageable—corporate sales, making products for clients that supply the material. It’s still pursuing its mission of sustainability. But to the artsy crowd that made PUP popular, it could look like a sellout. “We were big influencers 10 years ago, and we’ve moved quietly into the deeper issues of public design,” Sink says. “We’re trying to think about the next thing.”
Lately, the “next thing” has been encouraging sustainability in auto racing. PUP has a strong partnership with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, turning its banners into products that are sold at the track’s gift shop and other month-of-May outlets. The process has convinced the Speedway to start making its banners from a more environmentally friendly material. That relationship has led to other opportunities in racing: PUP upcycles Pennzoil’s banners into bags and McLaren Racing’s soft fabric fire suits into gloves and duffels. Because the products go back to the client to give as gifts or to sell, only a few are sold to the public.
Other clients include conventions that come to town, like the National FFA Organization, for which PUP made handbags and backpacks from the group’s event banners and iconic blue corduroy. PUP also works with local attractions, including Conner Prairie, making bags from a retired hot air balloon, and the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, making gift shop products from brocade curtains. “We have saturated the market in Indianapolis with our Dome bags,” current PUP executive director Turae Dabney says. But the nostalgia that made them want to own a piece of the arena is still an important selling point. “Now we have to sell to the corporate client who has a tie to a banner [or other material],” she says.
The transition to relying on corporate partnerships solved a couple problems for PUP. First, the Dome material was never going to last forever. Also, Covid put a damper on PUP’s sales, especially in retail because people weren’t traveling or shopping in stores. And retail is labor-intensive. At the time, PUP was churning out both its Dome collection, stretching the collection’s life and jazzing up its look by mixing in Super Bowl banner fabric, and its leather Amtrak collection, made from upcycled train upholstery. This meant nearly every bag was one-of-a-kind and had to be designed and photographed. Corporate orders, however, don’t require photography or marketing.
Photos provided by Jessica Bricker
Even before Covid, PUP was taking a turn philosophically. After Bricker left, the leadership changed a couple times, which tends to bring about a shift in direction. Bricker’s successor felt strongly about the speaking series Daylight. Dabney, a first-generation college graduate who previously worked in state and national politics, leans into PUP’s identity as a product company and design educator. Under her leadership, PUP is engaging more with its westside community than with Indy’s creative class. She says PUP helped develop the connectivity of Central State’s master plan and is now the community outreach coordinator for a high-design bridge project over Fall Creek that will link the 16 Tech Innovation District to the medical campus at Indiana University Indianapolis. PUP created a position on its board for a westside resident, too.
PUP now brings in high school interns through Ivy Tech. Last summer, 18 kids learned about the role of design in the world—in terms of fashion and also in terms of sidewalks, homes, and park benches—and as a career. Each student made a bag, learning a valuable skill. PUP is doing the same with eighth graders from Christel House West Academy across the street from its current location. The students will design, sew, and sell their products to classmates, putting together a marketing plan and cost analysis. The process includes broader design education. “We talk to them about what they want Indianapolis to look like,” Dabney says. “That gets us back to the heart of PUP.”
Dabney likes to say that PUP “convenes the conversation” about sustainability. PUP’s work with auto racing, for example, is extending into discussions on the future of the sport. Enormous cars burning huge amounts of gasoline and rubber is not ideal for the environment, but PUP has been working with various racing groups on their initiatives to reduce the sport’s carbon footprint.
Product sales still fuel it all. The Amtrak collection has been PUP’s primary economic engine for the last five years. It started before Bricker left. One of his college friends worked for Amtrak and had a line on 12,000 leather seats set to be replaced on the East Coast’s Acela trains. Amtrak donated the material, resulting in PUP’s second collection following the Dome bags. The buttery, broken-in, blue leather was cleaned, cut, and sewn into a line of 11 travel accessories, including the Switchman messenger bag, the Dispatcher Dopp kit, and the Inspector sunglasses case.
The collection was a hit, selling around 2,000 pieces. It even earned an honorable mention in Fast Company’s 2019 Innovation by Design Awards. Amtrak promotes it to their frequent travelers, letting them trade in mileage points for the product. PUP and Amtrak sold out a rerelease in April, and more inventory is in the works.
NEXT STOP
Inside PUP’s Central State studio, it feels like little has changed from when it first began. The raw space retains PUP’s original gritty vibe. Durable white clutches and handbags mixed with colorful pieces cut out from vinyl banners are displayed on shelves. Behind the shelves, a fabric warehouse overflows with raw materials and workers busy cutting and sewing.
Locals still carry their PUP bags, but it’s hard to find a new piece these days. You have to know where to look. Silver in the City still stocks a few. Conner Prairie’s gift shop sells some backpacks. A Dome piece, aside from the card holders sold online, is the hardest to come by. With the material down to half an acre, PUP is rationing it and won’t make any more Dome bags. But it’s dedicated to using every scrap wisely. It also acquired a similar white material, the roof of the bubble-shaped West Indy Racquet Club that was damaged in a storm; a tennis bag prototype is in the works. PUP has also come close to landing other stadium roofs in Vancouver and Syracuse.
But the PUP spirit of making Indy cooler still smolders. United State of Indiana and The Shop were both T-shirt-making neophytes when they joined PUP at the Super Bowl’s Outpost pop-up in 2012, and they have grown into their own brick-and-mortars. USI has a staff of 10 and sells 15,000 shirts a year, and The Shop has three retail locations. GangGang and Pattern have picked up the torch of putting out ambitious homegrown creative projects at the reinvigorated Stutz Building, and Big Car Collaborative, a community-based arts group that predates PUP, is currently putting $6.5 million into expanding its southside campus. Indy is still plenty indie.
Photos provided by Jessica Bricker
As PUP charts a new course in its post-Dome era, it might not be the visible emblem of our civic fabric that it once was. But it doesn’t need to be. PUP helped sew some pieces of our identity together and define Indy’s new brand—resourceful, practical, playful, creative, collaborative, industrious, and innovative. No city had ever before reused an NFL arena roof to make accessories that funded community improvements. Of course not! But it made perfect sense—so some Hoosiers stepped up and did it. And beautifully so, harnessing our heritage to move us forward while inspiring others through the examples of heart and hard work. PUP gave us a tangible vision of who we are that we can carry with us every day.
What’s cooler than that?
