Apple Opens New York Grand Central Store

17 Dec 2011 | News | Angela Topchu on Google+

Apple’s brand new store located at New York’s world-famous Grand Central Terminal opened its doors at 10 a.m. on Friday, December 9. It is fifth Apple store in New York City for now. Apple said 2,500 people were waiting in line before the opening, and the store had nearly 4,000 visitors before noon.

Hundreds of Apple fans, tourists and journalists like the store because first of all this location is one of the world’s largest Apple Stores (23,000 square feet). Second it combines past and present. Apple “inserts” its modern designed products into 1913 Beaux Arts building.

Apple always tries to design its stores the way they want. However, this time is the first time they weren’t able to make wanted interior and exterior designs. Despite this fact, the store looks as any Apple store would: wood tables neatly arranged with laptops, iPads and iPhones just as you’d expect. Every part of the space is used — even the corridors that connect the balconies are filled with gadgets. The store is pretty same as any other. It has two Genius Bars with 12 seats each, 45 display tables for products, three walls of apple accessories and 315 full and part-time employees, training sessions, 15-minute tutorials and workshops.

Rumors say that Apple got a sweetheart deal from the MTA of New York because Grand Central is not just a rail station, but also it’s a shopping mall as well. Due to rumors, in July, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a 10-year lease with the company for the store. The company paid chef Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur $5 million to exit its lease on the space eight years early. But, nobody’s sure whether this fact is true or not.

Personally, I’m really impressed as I’m a huge fan of Apple. In my opinion, Apple is happy about opening the Grand Central Store because they put it in a very high foot traffic location. It is very crowded: 75,000 people pass through Grand Central every day and during holidays this number increase to 1 million.