The post-renovation plaza, with new skylights. Version 2.0 opens on Friday, September 20, and this is, apart from a couple of slides that flashed past during Apple’s annual announcements festivities last week, everyone’s first look at it. She’s audibly giddy about the forthcoming reopening of the store, which has been closed since January 2017 for a big renovation.
This week, Deirdre O’Brien, the 30-year Apple employee who is now its senior vice-president of retail and people, laughed when I told her about my unexpectedly dressy late-night shopping experience.
Why would a person bother to get up early, camp out, line up? A peculiar sense of community, one that is magnified in the center of a city of strangers. (Although to be fair, the store is a little easier to reach.) Its phenomenal drawing power is doubly curious when you remember that Apple has a perfectly nice e-commerce site, where you can absolutely preorder a new iPhone the day before it is released. Even as we all talk about the end of retail, Apple claims more annual visitors than the Statue of Liberty. (Whereas, as they did intend, I bought a computer.) What is inarguably true, though, is that the store itself has become a destination, even a landmark, in the past dozen years. It was likely the one part of the experience the folks in Cupertino would not have expected, at least not directly.
#UPTOWN APPLE STORE HOURS FULL#
Among the few other customers was a foursome in full eveningwear: two men in tuxedos, two women in gowns, straight from a party or perhaps the Metropolitan Opera. I remember noticing, then as now, that the staff was diverse, enthusiastic, fiercely trained. At 12:30 a.m., it was quiet, but it was not empty. Over the next hour, we warmed up to the hey-why-not oddness of the idea and headed uptown.ĭuring the day, that store is bustling if not hectic. The new store is open 24-7.” She meant the flagship Apple Store, unveiled a year earlier on Fifth Avenue near 59th Street. Around 11:30 p.m., my soon-to-be-wife said, “You know, you could just go replace it. I was trying to get some weekend work done, and the machine was No Longer Having It. One Saturday evening in 2007, the aged iMac on my desk gave up the ghost. Three of the four locations at Mall of America, Ridgedale, and Southdale have been renovated over the past few years.įollow along on Twitter for daily Apple Store news.The Fifth Avenue Apple Store, reopening this Friday. Minnesota has four more Apple Stores in the Minneapolis area, all of which have reopened. The store also featured a unique garden roof when it opened in 2010. Though we’ve made the difficult decision to permanently close Apple Uptown, all of our valued team members will be offered other positions within Apple and we look forward to continuing to serve our customers at our four nearby stores.Īpple Uptown is significant in Apple Retail history as one of the first locations built with a Briefing Room for business customers. Paul area have served customers for 19 years, and our nearly 500 team members look forward to helping our customers for a long, long time. In a statement, the company noted that all store team members will be offered other positions: Apple said its decision to close the store was already in the works prior to COVID-19 shutdowns, but the pandemic and protest damage accelerated the timeline.
#UPTOWN APPLE STORE HOURS WINDOWS#
Like many stores in the Uptown district, protest damage left the store’s windows smashed and boarded up.Īs more stores in Minneapolis reopened and Apple repaired other damaged locations, questions began to mount about the fate of Apple Uptown. While some Apple Stores had reopened when protests broke out due to the killing of George Floyd in May, Apple Uptown near the site of the incident was still temporarily closed. Apple confirmed to the Star Tribune that the store has closed permanently. Apple Uptown in Minneapolis closed temporarily in March due to COVID-19, but unlike over 90% of Apple’s other stores in the US, it will not reopen when conditions improve.
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