Facebook’s initial public offering, plagued by trading errors and a 16 percent drop in the share price, will push more individual investors out of a stock market they already distrust after the financial crisis.NEW YORK – One of the world’s largest Apple stores is opening at the landmark Grand Central Terminal today.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s bus and subway system, says Apple Inc.’s expenses amount to a payment of $180 per square foot for its use of the 23,000-square-foot space – slightly less than the $200-per-square-foot top rate at the century-old Manhattan train hub.
By leasing to Apple, the MTA says it is quadrupling the rent for Grand Central’s east balcony and an adjacent one overlooking the cavernous main concourse with its famed night-sky ceiling. The store also includes a basement storage area that the MTA has never leased before.
The transit agency says the draw of the Apple name promises to increase foot traffic to other businesses at the terminal, which is visited by about 750,000 people daily and is home to the Metro-North commuter railroad.
Apple, the company behind Macintosh computers and such iconic products as the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone, signed a 10-year lease with the MTA for the space once occupied by Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant, which got $5 million from Apple to clear out early.
MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said the $180-per-square-foot cost reflects the $5 million payment to the restaurant, plus Apple’s $2.5 million capital investment in the space and a $1.1 million annual rate that will rise each year of the lease.
The Grand Central Terminal Apple store, the fifth to open in New York City, is about the size of two that are in London.
