STORE WATCH: Madison Avenue Apple Store Opens On June 13th Despite Cranky Neighbors

The Apple Store at 940 Madison Avenue under construction in early May

Apple has officially announced the opening of its seventh New York City store in a 93-year old former bank building on Madison Avenue (pictured above) by quitetly posting it in the windows. Eager Upper East Side customers will be able to start shopping a week from Saturday on June 13th. Of course, it will be no thanks to many of the store's new neighbors in the rarefied area surrounding the former Whitney Museum. In the most stereotypically snooty way, a group of neighborhood dwellers has been protesting the otherwise highly anticipated new store over the past few months claiming that it is too downscale to be nestled amongst the street's exclusive designer boutiques, and that the long lines generated by new product launches, particularly the annual iPhone releases, will disrupt the genteel nature of the neighborhood. While The Shophound tends to think that the protest generated far more press than it did serious consideration from either Apple or the local Community Board (Did anyone really think that Apple would cancel a costly new store because a few rich neighbors are whining?), Apple has promised that the store would be respectful to its neighbors and that future product launches would be limited, as in the case of the recent Apple Watch release, which relied more on customers pre-reserving items online than waiting in long lines for first-come-first-serve purchasing.
Tiresome NIMBYists aside, it looks like the Apple Store's opening will do the neighborhood more of a favor by making up for lost traffic on the block of Madison Avenue between 74th and 75th Streets since the Whitney Museum decamped from its iconic Marcel Breuer designed building on the block for its new Meatpacking District home. Stores in the surrounding area have been reporting slow business since the Museum's move, and while the Metropolitan Museum of Art is eventually planning to use the building for events and a satellite home for its modern collections during a major renovation of its own, a draw like the Apple Store on the same block should go a long way to remedying the traffic deficit for nearby merchants.