The first Bush Stadium seats have been installed at the corner of Alabama and Vermont Streets. The official unveiling was took place at 10:00, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the event. I chatted with Michael and Jessica Bricker from People for Urban Progress, as well as Bryan Luellen, Annette Darrow, Jessica Mitchell, and Samantha Cross from IndyGo in the hopes of finding out some more information about the project.
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Urban Indy:Â How did this opportunity happen?
Michael Bricker: Ryan Fitzpatrick and his brother Kevin (from organization called Ecolaborative) were working with the Bush Stadium reuse people and came up to us with the idea for salvaging the seats. We also had an intern named Ryan Gallagher, whose college thesis was based on increasing bus ridership, and he believed that increasing amenities would help towards that goal. Basically, our organization was the facilitator that brought these two ideas together.
UI: Which bus stops are next in line?
MB: College and Alabama is the pilot. There are 4 other bus stops proposed. They will be at 10th and College, 86th and the Monon, Broad Ripple and Carrollton, and Fall Creek and Meridian. After that, other organizations can sponsor their own bus stops through the PUP Stop program.
UI: Is there funding in place for maintenance?
Bryan Luellen: IndyGo will maintain them. It is possible that they might become part of the adopt-a-stop program. But the seats are pretty sturdy, and they are designed to be outside, so they will not need much maintenance.
UI: Has anyone else done this?
MB: Not that we know of. Other stadium seats may be in the private domain, but these are the first to be re-purposed for public use that we know of.
UI: How did you get the city to buy off on the project?
MB: It was pretty easy, actually. We worked with Develop Indy and the developer of the Stadium. Develop Indy helped us quickly secure access to the stadium and the seats. We have to get them out of the stadium by March 2nd.
BL: Also, IndyGo pursued a license from the city to place the bench in a public Right-of-Way.
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Thanks to P.U.P and IndyGo for the invitation and interview. Also thanks to Aaron Renn at Urbanophile, who provided a few of these questions. This article is cross-posted on his site, and if you haven’t visited that website, I’d recommend doing so now.
I love it! It even matches the cities brand of trying to be a sports capital. These should be at all bus stops (at least near sporting venues/downtown). You know what london and chicago bus stops look like and now Indianapolis has an opportunity to have their own one of a kind piece of infrastructure scattered throughout the city. I applaud People for Urban Progress, yet another great idea Indianapolis!
I agree with Travis – wonderful idea and way to go Indianapolis !
Thank you all for the support! The original idea was to save Bush Stadium from the condo-project entirely and turn it into a gigantic green-energy factory, re-using, re-cycling and re-producing fuels, food, water, heat and other bi-products of green energy. But that didn’t work out, so we tried saving what we could inside the stadium. The result: 10,000+ stadium seats (a lot of them with lead-paint) are going to be removed and saved from landfill. This is just the first in many upcoming projects that we are going to be working on and collaborating with the future of Indy’s innovation leaders. The seats have homes yet to be imagined and Indy has a growing need for unique ways to re-use its trash.
Awesome! Keep up the good ideas PUP