Back in February, several rumors surfaced indicating Apple was planning on opening a major new retail store in Grand Central Terminal, New York in September. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Apple Retail, reports suggested the Store in Grand Central was set to become the largest Apple Store ever built, likely meant to host thousands of customers every day because of the heavy traffic in Grand Central. Furthermore, to drive traffic away from the popular retail location in 5th Avenue, the rumored new Apple Store in Manhattan would accomplish the double functionality of better managing customers across retail stores, and being an impressive construction in Grand Central. This, on top of the Retail anniversary, lead many people to believe that September would indeed see the launch of an Apple Store, Grand Central.
But it looks like we won’t see such a store, after all. Sources close to the M.T.A. report early negotiations “have fallen through”, and Apple has abandoned its plans to build a store in Grand Central. Jeffrey Roseman, executive of Newark Night Frank, also sent a tweet to suggest Apple is “not coming” to Grand Central.
At this point it’s very unclear whether Apple had actually been considering Grand Central as a location for an upcoming New York store, or everything was just a result of a series of rumors based on the wrong sources. Several bloggers pointed out in the past weeks that building an Apple Store in the famous retail hub would be a difficult goal to achieve because of the negotiations required, and available space in Grand Central. [via Cult of Mac]
