Although not the smallest, Apple’s planned store in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal could be the tech giant’s cheapest Big Apple location. The backdrop of countless movies, the cavernous Grand Central turns out to be less expensive than your average Manhattan store front.
Ironically, because Grand Central is such a landmark, restrictions will reduce costs as Apple can make fewer changes to the building. Instead, Apple will pay a bit over $6 million to rent about 23,000 existing square feet, or $112 per square feet. That compares favorably to the $2,000 per square feet upscale Manhattan shop tenants must pay.
Apple plans to pay $5 million to buy out Metrazur Restaurant’s remaining eight-year lease for 9,685 sq. ft now used on the east balcony. Another $1.1 million per year goes to the MTA to rent the space along with another 14,000 sq. ft. on the northeast balcony, according to the Wall Street Journal and ifoAppleStore.
However, for that money comes access to some highly-wanted foot traffic. Each day, more than 750,000 people go through Grand Central Terminal – more than 1 million during the holidays. Half of those visitors earn more than $100,000 with 20 percent making over $200,000, according to the Grand Central website.
If Apple gets MTA approval Wednesday to begin construction, the new store could open by November – just in time to hawk the iPhone, iPad and Mac to all of those monied travelers. All Aboard!
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
10 responses to “Apple’s Grand Central Store Could Be Cheapest in NYC”
This is a fantastic new location for Apple, but the “artist’s view” is tedious and boring, and that’s definitely NOT Apple. Even though Apple’s designers can’t drastically alter the architecture, look for a design that will have classic elegance and style written all over it. Apple will reach hundreds of thousands more people with this store, and the passersby will have the demographics to be Apple users: upwardly mobile, middle and high income, bright, productive. Let’s face it, the biggest negative that Windows users slam against the Mac is that “Windows is cheaper”–well so is a 30 year old VW. You can drive it if you want, but I prefer a BMW.
The only problem with this location is that Microcopy might have difficulty getting space for a store close by.
This could very well be the highest sales volume/sq ft of all the Apple stores. Quite a coup.
Apple is not allowed to mess with the walls or the flooring. So they can’t do their typical posters, the stone floors etc. The only places they can actually do any rebuilding are the non public areas. In the public floor they are only going to be able to bring in their standard tables and such.
So yes this will not be a ‘typical’ looking Apple store. But in the end, that’s okay with Apple cause it will make them a small fortune.
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