MTA tells New York to 'bring it on' & investigate Apple's Grand Central lease - Page 2

I'm assuming you actually can't buy property there. I'm not familrar with that place.

Bean counters. And politicians to boot. The worst kind.

Nonsense. Increased traffic, in general, brings increased sales. Your "observations" are incredibly flawed unless the other stores are just garbage.

Ah, the New York subway. On my first visit to New York, one day I suddenly found myself walking in the wrong direction against a horde of commuters.

Very "professionally", a young African American man on a collision course with myself (or is it the other way round?) simply held me by my shoulders and efficiently slid me to the side... Without even breaking his stride. The day was saved, no commuters were affected in their daily grind, and I had my brush with "gritty" New York City and came out intact.

Do you have access to the sales figures from the surrounding stores? Now, do you have access to sales figures for nearby stores that do NOT have an Apple Store in their mall? Unless you have all that information - AND the ability to interpret it - then you have no basis for your claim.

Retail is fairly well understood and the evidence is quite clear. A large, upscale magnet store does tend to increase the sales of the surrounding store.

[QUOTE=elroth;1999560]
I did read the story. Apple is not paying $180/sq ft. The MTA claims that Apple is paying the equivalent of $180 per sq ft because of the other investments. In the end, the MTA is getting $60 sq/ft and they claim that's 4x the previous rent, so Metrazur was indeed paying $15/sq ft. If that's not the case, then the MTA doesn't know how to write an intelligent, clear response. But even if I'm wrong, the $45 sq/ft that you believe Metrazur was paying for the space was still way below market rates.

In only the broadest terms. The fact is that there are certain stores that any given single person is never going to walk into. I, for example, am never going to walk into 99% of the stores in any given shopping mall under any circumstances.

The other issue is that when you have a destination store like Apple, if someone buys something there, there is a good chance that Apple has taken all the money that they're going to spend, since (aside from accessories like iPhone cases), the products are expensive. How many people do you think get a new phone, Pad or computer in the Apple Store in a mall and then say, "Oh, while I'm here I think I'll buy some jewelry" or "I also need to buy some shoes." Maybe the pretzel vendor gets a sale.

What other stores might benefit from are the people who go to the Apple store, aren't ready to buy yet and then spend additional time perusing the mall. Those are the people most likely to spend money on something else.

There's a shopping mall in Queens, NY that at one time (and even though it was a crappy mall) had the highest revenue per square foot of any shopping mall in the U.S. (even more than the Mall of America). So they tripled the size of the mall. Total sales only went up slightly. Sales per sq/ft went way down. Why? They're basically splitting the same dollars over more stores.

Next time you're in the mall, look for people carrying Apple bags/products. See if they're carrying bags from any other stores. My bet is that you see that less than 5% of the time.

Of course all this is anecdotal and can't be proven either way unless one can demonstrate that Apple moved into a location, sales went up for the nearby stores, then Apple moved to a different location in the mall and sales went down for those stores. Even that wouldn't be solid proof because of the vagaries of the economy and consumer spending.

Good for the MTA! It's about time someone takes on the posturing politicians and bombastic news media with facts instead of ignorant and self-serving rhetoric.

If I lived in New York I'd be demanding to know why the comptroller is an ignorant idiot wasting taxpayer dollars by being swayed by ill-informed news stories.

Don't quit your day job, or ever try to run your own business. Your inability to grasp interrelated concepts will doom you to failure. Your best bet is to continue working for someone else who can successfully track complex concepts and provide employment for you.


Completely irrelevant to the transaction - except for those who have idiotic and twisted ideas of "fair"

Did you see the word "competitive" in the MTA response? Do you really think they would've responding so forcefully if they didn't have everything covered?

Then again we really aren't interested in dealing in facts - just feelings like "the evil corporation should pay more because they have plenty of profits and are just being greedy bastards by not sharing for no particular reason but to be good guys". Good grief - what claptrap!


If they were the highest bidder like Apple, nope. I do know if I were a tenant in GCS I wouldnt be as happy since MS stores generate a fraction of the volume of traffic as Apple stores. Indeed, no other retailer brings the traffic Apple does. The existing tenants just got a huge windfall - until their leases are up. They will more than likely go up due to he increased benefit of being in the space. What a concept - as value increases, so does the cost!

But I'm sure that will also try to be spun by those completely ignorant of how complex things like retail real estate work but think that by looking at one variable in the transaction they are qualified to pontificate


Why Apple and not another tenant? Just because they are successfull they should have to give out free stuff?!? Amazing. I'll be shocked if America survives another 20 years with this idiotic "thinking".

it was worse than criminal - it wasn't fair

Because "fairness" is all that matters

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."