Apple to open first Brooklyn retail store on July 30

AppleInsider

Apple's ninth New York City retail store, and its first in the borough of Brooklyn, will open next weekend in the Williamsburg neighborhood, the company has officially announced.

An early rendering of what 247 Bedford would look like following its remodel. | Image courtesy of The Real Deal

The latest Apple Store will open at the corner of 247 Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn on Saturday, July 30. Apple will hold a grand opening celebration at 10 a.m. Eastern.

The new location is in Brooklyn's neighborhood of Williamsburg ,at the corner of North 3rd Street and Bedford Avenue. The company's first Brooklyn location has been rumored for some time, but as of Thursday is now official.

Apple began hiring for the store back in May, two years after it signed a long-term lease for the location. Renovations at the property began in 2015.

Six of Apple's New York City retail stores are located in Manhattan, with the most recent addition of the Upper East Side opening a year ago. The company also has retail stores in Queens and Staten Island, and the Brooklyn location will be its ninth in America's most populous city.

radarthekat

Why, why do they keep opening stores?  Don't they know they're DOOMED?

softeky

I live in Brooklyn. Hopefully this new store is useful for a bunch of locally-based people. Not useful for anyone in Park Slope, Brooklyn I'm afraid. Unfortunately it's in an area (Williamsburg) that is starved of useful MTA access. Catch an "L" via Manhattan or a "G" (slow and rare service). Takes 45 minutes - which is a longer trip to any Manhattan Apple Store. Manhattan based Apple Stores are crazily busy and take several days to get a Guru appointment (even at the 24 hour 5th Ave Apple Store). Who knows, perhaps the busy Manhattan Apple Stores will drive business to Williamsburg?

ronn

Since I'll be art-hopping in Brooklyn that day, I plan to stop by for the opening. Still hoping for a store in downtown Brooklyn soon. This location is so out of the way in terms of public transportation.

davicho

95% of Brooklyners will not go here. Hard to get to.

22july2013

The new Apple site is right across the street from a company that congress wrote and published just ten days ago as having been a front for criminal activity, specifically doing business with a handful of sanctioned countries and laundering drug money. http://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/07072016_oi_tbtj_sr.pdf ; It says in this report that Eric Holder personally stated to congress in March 6, 2013 that he wouldn't prosecute them for money laundering because that could throw the world economy into a tailspin. To be fair, the criminal events were 10-20 years ago, and the company paid record fines, and may have stopped laundering drug and rogue nations' money now, but nobody was held personally accountable for the criminal activity. The top levels of the DOJ (as opposed to the lower levels, including Loretta Lynch at the time) didn't want to prosecute criminals if doing so would put the US economy into recession. My only source of information to this story is a bit of googling; I'm not an authority on this topic. It just seems interesting, if not relevant to Apple, other than being across the street from this company, which I won't name here: just read the link above to learn more. I only suggest that you read the Executive Summary, one page long, starting on page one. Curiously it was Loretta Lynch (who was at the time a lower level DOJ employee) who brought the criminal charges against the company, but now that she succeeded Holder as head of DOJ, she isn't doing much with those charges now. Perhaps she now agree with holder's public statement to congress that some banks "are so large that it is very difficult to make a decision to prosecute them". And to show that I'm not biased here, I will point out that Holder later said that quote, while accurate, was misconstrued. He re-explained his words to congress: that when he said "difficult" he meant that the difficulty was that it would be a decision that would impact innocent people (the bank's clients and stockholders?) but that he actually would charge them. Personally, I think that's a non-credible explanation. I believe his words of March 6th in which he said that he didn't like prosecuting crime in big banks if it would hurt the economy. Is that really his call? Isn't his mandate to prosecute criminals?

larrystar

I was happy to learn that Apple was finally coming to Brooklyn, long-overdue when I learned the store is in Williamsburg that's far far from Mill Basin.

Cynflor

davicho said:

95% of Brooklyners will not go here. Hard to get to.

Hard for some, very easy for others: the entire population (112,000-ish people, and growing) of Williamsburg (this location is at its center, and it's all within 15 minutes walking distance), and the entire population served by the L & J trains (i.e., Bushwick & East New York, north part of Bedford-Stuyvesant), and even parts of Manhattan near the L train (Stuyvesant Town & northern part of East Village).  I won't mention the G train because, as someone else commented, that train is a joke.   But probably this adds up to half a million people that the shop will be closer to than any Manhattan Apple Store.   Of course, half a million is a mere one fifth of the population of Brooklyn, which is itself larger than the combined populations of Seattle, San Jose and San Francisco, and would be the country's 4th largest city if it were on its own.  On the other hand, it has the 2nd-highest cost of living in the U.S., but the lowest per-household income of any county within 100 miles in any direction.  Fun facts!  Fuhgeddaboudit!

bestkeptsecret

An Apple Tree Grows in Brooklyn...

stantheman

davicho said:

95% of Brooklyners will not go here. Hard to get to.

The new store does not seem so remote on the map, but if the 5% hypothetical is accurate then 130,000 Brooklyn residents (0.05x2,600,000) will visit Apple's new Brooklyn store. If the average shopper visits the store twice each year, that's 700 a day. Plus shoppers hailing from other cities. If the average shopper spends $100 per visit, annual store revenues will surpass $25 million from Brooklyn residents alone.

dasanman69

Cynflor said:

davicho said:

95% of Brooklyners will not go here. Hard to get to.

Hard for some, very easy for others: the entire population (112,000-ish people, and growing) of Williamsburg (this location is at its center, and it's all within 15 minutes walking distance), and the entire population served by the L & J trains (i.e., Bushwick & East New York, north part of Bedford-Stuyvesant), and even parts of Manhattan near the L train (Stuyvesant Town & northern part of East Village).  I won't mention the G train because, as someone else commented, that train is a joke.   But probably this adds up to half a million people that the shop will be closer to than any Manhattan Apple Store.   Of course, half a million is a mere one fifth of the population of Brooklyn, which is itself larger than the combined populations of Seattle, San Jose and San Francisco, and would be the country's 4th largest city if it were on its own.  On the other hand, it has the 2nd-highest cost of living in the U.S., but the lowest per-household income of any county within 100 miles in any direction.  Fun facts!  Fuhgeddaboudit!

softeky said:

I live in Brooklyn. Hopefully this new store is useful for a bunch of locally-based people. Not useful for anyone in Park Slope, Brooklyn I'm afraid. Unfortunately it's in an area (Williamsburg) that is starved of useful MTA access. Catch an "L" via Manhattan or a "G" (slow and rare service). Takes 45 minutes - which is a longer trip to any Manhattan Apple Store. Manhattan based Apple Stores are crazily busy and take several days to get a Guru appointment (even at the 24 hour 5th Ave Apple Store). Who knows, perhaps the busy Manhattan Apple Stores will drive business to Williamsburg?

I also live in Brooklyn, by the J train. It's still a quicker train ride and then walk to the SoHo store. 

ronn

Just in time for a transit nightmare:

http://pix11.com/2016/07/25/l-train-to-close-from-manhattan-to-brooklyn-in-2019-for-superstorm-sandy-repairs/

Let's hope Apple has a 2nd location (preferably in the downtown or Brooklyn Heights area) ready for this massive disruption in an already piss-poor transit area.