Dublin, the largest and capital city of Ireland, may finally be about to get its first Apple Store.
Apple is reportedly in talks with a developer group called the Natrium consortium to open up a flagship retail store in Dublin’s city center — possibly based on the ground floor of an iconic former department store, bought last year for €29 million ($33 million).
A long-established department store on O’Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland, the Clery’s site is one of the area’s most iconic buildings; in keeping with Apple’s move to choose upscale historic buildings for many of its flagship stores. The current building dates back to 1922, replacing a previous one destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising. In 2004, a five-year restoration program was completed at a cost of €24 million.
At present, the only Apple Store on the island of Ireland is based in central Belfast, Northern Ireland. Despite this, Apple has a long-term presence in Ireland. In addition to a proposed data center in Galway, Apple operates a large support centre in Cork, where it also has a 4,000-person factory used for building iMacs: the only Apple-owned manufacturing facility in the world. Earlier this year, staff at the site were evacuated following a bomb scare.
Apple recently announced that it is working with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) to fund research toward ocean energy worth €1 million, or approximately $1,072,662. The fund commences this year, and will €250,000 every year for four years. It has additionally announced plans to hire an extra 1,000 employees in Ireland.
Will some of those be retail staff? We’ll have to wait and see.
Source: Irish Times
