“Tech giant Apple has inked a 10-year deal with the MTA to open its largest store in the world in Grand Central Terminal,” Jennifer Fermino reports for The NY Post.
“The 23,000-square-foot store will take up Grand Central’s north and northeast balconies, displacing Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant, according to MTA documents,” Fermino reports. “The MTA is estimating that the deal will bring it a minimum of $5 million in profits.”
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Fermino reports, “The transit agency will ask its financial committee to approve the deal Monday. If it passes as expected, the deal will go to the agency’s board of directors Wednesday for a final OK.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: I give [Apple] two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake. – David Goldstein, Channel Marketing Corp. President, commenting on Apple’s opening of retail stores, May 21, 2001
Related articles:
RUMOR: Apple backs out of rumored Grand Central Terminal retail store – March 19, 2011
Apple to construct most massive Retail Store yet in Grand Central Terminal – February 17, 2011
Apple targets Manhattan for fifth Apple Retail Store, evaluating Grand Central Terminal – February 8, 2011
Like the Dell quote or Laura Goldman quote, it never gets old!
Agreed!
+1
MTA could also invite tenders for carts in carriages selling vista 7 DVDs (400 million copies sold) to keep up with high demand. The Microsoft Store cart coming to a train near you. I can’t think of any other products they might offer though. Aside from perhaps chilli dogs and MS office 32-bit home and student edition.
Question: Has Goldstein ever publically admitted that he was wrong? Because if he did, we should let the poor schmuck off the hook.
——RM
I e-mailed him last year and asked him that very question.
I’m still waiting for an answer.
Makes a great deal of sense. Rather than trying to open mini-stores in all those upscale communities along the Hudson, (Tarrytown, etc.) customers can take the train right into Grand Central and shop without going out in the streets of Manhattan. Besides, think of all those people who have a 15 minute wait for the next train and think: “I think I’ll buy a laptop while I’m here.”
Not to my knowledge, she has fled the country though because of other… (Cough) … issues with integrity.
This gives even more meaning to the “Big Apple”.
Ballmer is pissed. Now he’ll have to build an equivalent sizes store to match in size somewhere there.
But the space won’t be available.
this is great, I have been wanting to visit the oyster bar at grand central, now I can also visit the largest apple store!
I’ll take a dozen Kilpatrick style.
I love Grand Central.
I’ll read the “full story” somewhere else besides the NY Post. (WTF- the Enquirer didn’t cover it?…)
Hmmm.. apparently the Post got the story first. I hope it’s still true, though.
Brings new meaning to Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch!
Guys, the biggest store is the Online store!!!!
I just wanted to say I just ordered ….
13-inch MacBook Pro
Available: 1 – 3 business days
Receive it: 2 Aug – 4 Aug by Standard Shipping
Part number: Z0LY
Configuration
2.3GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM — 2x2GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Backlit Keyboard (English) & User’s Guide
as an education buy for my kid.
Enjoy it! If your kid lets you near it!
But.. But.. Will that leave room for the installation of the neighboring Microsoft Store?
The weird thing is, that restaurant is just a big balcony. Makes sense for a restaurant, you just close the stairs… nobody is going to sneak up and cook themselves a meal.
But for an Apple store? Are they going to enclose it? I could see them enclosing it with glass, but that would be expensive, and worse invoke the regulatory nightmare that is doing business in NYC…. and for a lease that is only 10 years? Apple must have a long term option on that lease to make it worthwhile.
1 more place to buy the worlds favorite products… But of course there will be detractors.. Bottom line is they are unstoppable now .. Just might as well accept it and hopefully enjoy the ride,
Great for Apple, all of us Mac’rs and the new guys the Terminal users will draw.
Now if only Apple could create stores in every major airport, particularly the internationals. For surely, flight delays would be a joy, that is if they could build them large enough.
And Apple, if there was one fantastic spot to place another flagship it would be in Toronto’s Dundas Square. Guaranteed to outdraw the Cube in New York or the Cylinder in Shanghai. Perhaps a (raised) Pentagon to accommodate its irregular shape* and to compliment the Circle in Cupertino.
And for those that suggest an Igloo, you really don’t know much about your best neighbors.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonge-Dundas_Square
What? No more equivalent size space for MSFT Store at Grand Central Terminal?! Hey Baller-the-fat-ass-loser, what you gonna to do!? 🙂
It is probably the most prominent location in the terminal, on the eastern balcony (the western being still occupied by the “Michael Jordan’s Stakehouse”), overlooking the main lobby with the famous clock. If you’re waiting for a train, you’re waiting in that main lobby. While the place was “Metrazur”, nobody really bothered walking up those stairs to go in there (unless you actually were NOT waiting for a train, but looking for an upscale dinner). For an Apple store, there isn’t a more prefect location; even if you have only 10 minutes before your train leaves, and it is on tracks 19 through 31, you can take a quick look on that balcony.
I have no doubt, this one will be generating the most traffic (and, consequently, highest revenue per sq.ft.) of them all, including the current flagship, 5th Ave store.