103 Prince Street
The $20 million renovation of Apple’s Soho location is nearly complete, allowing the retailer to expand into an extra 5,000 square feet of space, Real Estate Weekly reported. Imperium Capital bought the property, at 103 Prince Street, at Greene Street, in 2011. Apple will reopen there in July 2012 and is temporarily located at 72 Greene Street, according to reports from CityBizList. [more]
Grand Central TerminalIn the latest twist to the saga of Apple’s lease at Grand Central Terminal, the State Assembly will also investigate the terms of the company’s alleged “sweetheart” deal, the New York Post reported. The store will open tomorrow.
The Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, which has authority over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency, has started assembling documents for an inquiry, the Post said. [more]
The press has been let into the much-discussed Apple store at Grand Central Terminal, set to open Friday, according to USA Today. The tech giant is paying $60 per square foot for the 23,000-square-foot store, one of its largest, and will make shopping as simple as possible for rushed commuters, allowing them to purchase the company’s products without the help of a sales assistant. They can simply slide an iPhone across a product’s bar code and grab the item. The receipt is delivered to them via email. While State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli previously blasted station-owner, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the deal with Apple, the MTA is continuing to defend the transaction and the intrinsic value of having the company in the building. [USA Today] [more]
While State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has blasted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for their $60-per-square foot deal with Apple for retail space in Grand Central Station, and plans an investigation, the MTA is keeping its cool, urging politicians and the public to “bring [the investigation] on,” the MTA said in a statement today.
Taken at face value, some observers say, the transaction looks like it gives the MTA — and by extension, the taxpayer — a raw deal. Apple’s rent in their 23,000-square-foot lease is far lower what other tenants pay at the transit and retail hub (Shake Shack will pay $200 per foot for Grand Central space, according to a report Tuesday in the New York Post). Also, the MTA failed to secure a percentage of sales revenue from Apple in their deal, something every other tenant at Grand Central pays. But the agency points to a number of constraints that explain that fact and why the deal generally made sense for the state agency. [more]
From left: State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and renderings of the Apple store in Grand CentralThe sweetheart deal that Apple got to open a store in Grand Central Terminal has caught the attention of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, according to the New York Post, and he’s launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was overly generous with the lease terms.
Apple is paying less rent than most other tenants, including neighbors on the balcony, and is the only of the 100 retailers in the terminal that doesn’t have to share its revenue with the agency. [more]
One does not usually speak of commercial real estate in terms of the miraculous, but as regards the Apple’s iconic flagship on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th streets — which just got an overhaul of its façade– the term is almost appropriate. For 40 years prior to Apple’s arrival in New York City in 2007, this area was a commercial disaster, first as a sunken pit whose varied businesses enticed few to descend, then, in developer Donald Trump’s reworking, as a marble-encased hole in the ground that no business could be induced to lease.
Only a business founded on the notion of “thinking outside the box” could possibly make a go of it, and no business fits that description better than Apple. [more]
Crown Acquisitions’ Stanley Chera and the Apple store at 103 Prince StreetCrown Acquisitions partnered with Centurion Realty to purchase the site of the city’s first Apple store for $75 million, the New York Post reported. Apple is renovating and expanding the 30,000-square-foot space at 103 Prince Street and is currently operating out of a temporary location a block away, at 72 Greene Street.
The building was previously owned by Westchester-based Ingersoll Realty, which had leased it to the U.S. Postal Service from 1975 through 2000. [more]
Online reviews company Yelp.com opened its new Manhattan office today at 104 Fifth Avenue, between 15th and 16th streets, the same office building where Apple is located. The 9,500-square-foot space is already home to over 65 full-time employees — 20 of whom joined Yelp just this past month — and includes local and brand sales executives and a marketing team.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman attended the opening along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne, the mayor’s Media & Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver and Economic Development Corporation President Seth Pinsky. – Katherine Clarke [more]
More and more of the big technology companies are interested in space in Manhattan, in particular because of their desire to be near the advertising companies on Madison Avenue, the New York Times reported. During the upcoming Advertising Week, Yahoo will be able to present its new offices in Viacom’s Times Square building to potential advertising clients, in a way that it wasn’t able to do before.
Yahoo’s Times Square suite at 1540 Broadway has purple-hued conference rooms, a lobby with custom graphics and door pulls shaped like exclamation points, and a dynamic design that are symbolic of a high-tech company. Comments
