CrunchGear

Quite a bit of income-generating (or self-serving) ad space on the top of the building, no?

Apple has like 7 products…

That west Chelsea location puts them less than 2 blocks from Google’s 500 NYC staff, which itself is a major carrier hotel and tech center. It’s also the south-western corner edge of the old “Silicon Alley” footprint.

Will all three floors be showroom though? It would make somewhat more sense if the upper floors are office space for their NYC media-related staff (ad buyers, press flacks, etc.), and maybe a little of the programming and other creative technical talent not living in Silicon Valley.

There needs to be more Apple stores here in the UK there is a few in London and other places in the UK but they are pretty much scarce. They should open one up in Hertfordshire or at least my home town… hurry up Apple!

I know they have that deal with Tesco to have Apple mini stores/section in their stores but would be nice to have a store near people.

They could always put a net/cafe sort of thing on the first floor, or just finally have enough Geniuses to actually take care of demand.

Or they could actually focus on computers with some of that space?

Given the area, they could have a high-end accessory boutique on the first floor with a bit nicer selection of Laptop bags and iPod accessories than the normal. If they could work the deals out, they could carry rarer and higher end stuff like Porter laptop bags, Vuitton messengers, the Geneva iPod speaker system, etc…

@ ilya

Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, iLife, the iMac range, MacBooks and MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, Mac Mini, iPod, iPod shuffle, iPod Nano, Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Logic, need I go on?

Isn’t this too big to be a traditional Apple shop? could they be planning a cut-price clearance outlet in the style of a WALMART? They have to get rid of their old version products somewhere ;-)

@ ilya

Apple stores currently average about $4000 revenue per sq foot, one of the highest in retail across any industry. Compare this with about $300/sq foot for Wal*Mart and it becomes to make sense from a business perspective. The location is also a very hip and trendy area, where a lot of design and media types hang out, so it’s a natural geographical expansion, to complement the SoHo and 5th Ave locations. Brilliant.

I don’t think its that odd of a choice site. Apple’s store locations are usually based on associated stores in the vicinity. This block is real high end trendy designer stores. ( Stella McCartney, Jeffrey and Alexander McQueen ). Apple gave up plans for a store on 34thst. despite the high foot traffic simply because it didn’t like the low class neighbors selling sportswear (pants 3 for $19).Plus this is the entrance and beginning of the planed High-line park. The high-line Park is a re-development of an old freight train line that runs from Meat-packing District (which no meat is packed in anymore) through Chelsea (NYC art gallery scene with over 300 galleries) and ends in Hells Kitchen.

From a city planning perspective, does apple really need a whole storefront, or wouldn’t it be better for that plaza if there were two or three businesses on that block? It would also get more people walking around the store.

The headline is misleading. Yes the store will be huge and the building it is in is quite large. But it’s not an entire NY block. It would have to extend west all the way to Washington St. And it would have to extend north all the way to 15th street. It’s more like 1/4 to 1/3 of NY Block.