Apple on Monday officially announced that its next retail store, in New York's Grand Central Station, will open at 10am on Friday, Dec. 9.
In a brief email sent to customers, Apple announced that its next Manhattan location will be open to the public by week's end. There is also a note on its Web site.
The store is officially located at 45 Grand Central Terminal. It will be housed on the east balcony of the main terminal, in the space previously occupied by the restaurant Metrazur.
Though the store will open at 10am on Friday, it will be open from 7am-9pm the following week for those who want to get in some early morning shopping. Saturday hours are 10am-7pm and it will be open from 11am-6pm on Sundays.
For last-minute Christmas shoppers, the store will be open from 10am-6pm on Christmas Eve and closed on Christmas Day.
Apple tipped the Dec. 9 opening date last week with a sign outside the still-closed store. Just like today's email, the sign, which resembled a typical train station departure board, read: "Apple Store, Grand Central. Arriving Friday, December 9."
There were rumors that the store would open in time for the Black Friday holiday, but shoppers had to travel to one of Apple's four other Manhattan locations—SoHo, Fifth Avenue, the Upper West Side, and West 14th Street—for some post-Thanksgiving deals.
The 23,000-square-foot Grand Central store will be one of Apple's biggest. According to the New York Post, Apple signed a 10-year lease with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in a deal that will cost Cupertino $800,000 per year, nearly half a million more than the rent paid by Metrazur. Apple reportedly gave Metrazur $5 million to vacate early.
Apple's contract, however, doesn't allow for any revenue-sharing with the MTA; New York State is reportedly investigating the deal to determine whether or not the MTA gave Apple "overly generous terms on its lease."
For more, see the Six Apple Stores to Visit Before You Die slideshow above.
