The Bottleworks Hotel on Mass Ave. in Indianapolis was part of an old Coca-Cola Bottling Plant. Joseph S. Pete
The massive transformation of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant on Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Indianapolis won Indiana's top restoration prize.
Indiana Landmarks, the statewide historical preservation group with a regional office in Gary's Miller neighborhood, gave its 2023 Cook Cup for Outstanding Restoration to the $300 million Bottleworks District in Indy. A developer turned a 12-acre Art Deco campus, where pop was long bottled, into a walkable culinary, arts and entertainment hub that includes an international food hall, restaurants, bars, movie theaters and a hotel.
The Cook Cup is awarded every year to a property owner who transformed a major historic building in Indiana. It's named after the Cook family, the medical device manufacturers from Bloomington who revived the long-dormant West Baden and French Lick Springs hotels in southern Indiana.
Jim and Lee Yuncker opened the Coca-Cola plant in 1931, hiring Rubush & Hunter to design the elaborate Art Deco building "with a gleaming white terra cotta façade, bronze storefronts, terrazzo flooring, colorful tile walls and the brand’s iconic script logo in gold-leaf lettering."
It was expanded over the next few decades until bottling ceased in the 1960s and Indianapolis Public Schools bought it, putting it to use for storage and as a bus terminal.
Hendricks Commercial Properties has been working since 2016 to revive it as a mixed-use site.
“Everyone working on it had a sense of pride in what they were doing and understood these buildings’ importance to the community,” says Gavin Thomas, Hendricks’ vice president of development. “We were very much interested in doing the right thing and setting the bar high, which was a big driver of the results.”
The Bottleworks District became an overnight destination. Plans call for more stores, offices, housing and parking.
“Hendricks’ adaptation of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant is a transformative project that exemplifies superior preservation practice and economic revitalization,” said Marsh Davis, president of Indiana Landmarks.
The former industrial building was turned into a 139-room boutique hotel after getting approval from the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology and the National Park Service reviewed and approved plans for the project.
Historic details were restored by the RATIO Architects with the help of photos and architectural plans. Workers restored the original bronze storefront and the original bold-colored tiling in the lavishly tiled hotel lobby.
A third floor was added, as well as an open-air courtyard on the roof.
“It was about really trying to understand the building and working with it instead of against it,” said David Kroll, RATIO’s principal and director of preservation.
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