Second Ave. Sagas

At Grand Central, finding an open use for public space

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

Once a restaurant, soon an Apple Store.

As Thanksgiving morphed into Black Friday a few days ago, the transit stories were dominated by something that didn’t happen. Despite rumors stretching back into the spring, Apple did not open its Grand Central flagship store by the time the day of sales rolled around. Instead, construction has continued apace, and the computer giant finally revealed its temporary signage at the former Metrazur space.

According to reports on 9to5mac, an Apple insider blog, rumors are now percolating of a December 9 opening date. That’s just a week and a half away now and still within the frenzied month of shopping that feeds into Christmas. Grand Central, already overrun with tourists during the holiday season, will soon play temporary host to legions of iPad-toting technologists as well.

For Apple and the MTA, the deal for the space is one made in fiscal heaven. Apple paid Metrazur, the restaurant that once called the mezzanine home, $5 million to terminate its lease early, and the deal with the MTA is a lucrative one. Apple will pay at least $800,000 a year for the space and another $300,000 for ancillary storage facilities. The MTA believes the mere presence of Apple could boost sales to other businesses in the landmarked terminal by a few million a year as well.

But what of the store itself? Does it fit in with the ethos of Grand Central Terminal and what it has become in the years after its renovation and renaissance?

A few weeks ago, my dad and I had lunch at the Oyster Bar, another iconic Grand Central locale, and our discussion turned toward the Apple Store. My dad, who has seen his favorite New York stores — the Tower Records locations, the local bookstores, anything on the Upper West Side that isn’t a bank or a Starbucks or a Gap — close over the years, wasn’t too impressed with a corporate behemoth of an Apple Store opening up in Grand Central.

When the MTA renovated the space and agreed to lease it to the restaurants, the balcony spaces were to be open for all as an open-air display of grandiosity and good food. With an understated presence, Metrazur simply blended in, and my dad wondered if the Apple store would do the same. Of course, Metrazur wasn’t exactly an egalitarian restaurant. Lunch combination plates started at $27 with prix fixe dinners topping $50 — before drinks. These weren’t Aureole prices, but they were steep enough.

The Apple Store, on the other hand, is a transient place. To those of us in my generation, the Apple Store is a public realm where we can take a break to check our email, browse the Internet or look up nearby attractions or restaurants. We don’t have to pay $12 for a Caesar Salad just to enjoy the views from the Apple Store; rather, we can walk in, look around and walk out without paying a dime. As long as Apple keeps its own signature stylings to a minimum, it’s hard to imagine a space as all-encompassing and welcoming as a computer store opening up in Grand Central.

The ultimate issue with the incoming Apple Store won’t concern the ease of access though. Rather, it will concern crowds. How will Grand Central cope with an influx of people streaming toward the Apple Store as harried commuters rush to and from their trains? What happens on days with big product launches when the lines at other Apple Stores stretch for blocks and blocks? How can the world’s largest computer retailer co-exist with the nation’s busiest rail terminal? The Apple Store will be open space for the public to use, and perhaps as they climb those stores, they can stop to appreciate the rest of what makes Grand Central so grand.

Comments

18 responses to “At Grand Central, finding an open use for public space”

  1. Kai B

    That temporary sign is very obtrusive. It reminds me of seeing the old photos of the terminal, with the giant Kodak sign. I sure hope that sign is indeed temporary.

    Reply
  2. Jeremy

    I don’t think it’s accurate to describe Grand Central as the nation’s busiest rail terminal. Penn Station still has more commuter and intercity rail passengers. And the same is true for subway ridership. Penn’s combined subway ridership (8th and 7th avenue stops) is around 160K per weekday, while Grand Central’s is 140K.

    Reply
  3. Peter

    Besides handling daily six-figure passenger loads from the Hudson Harlem & New Haven Lines, GCT absorbs the crowds from the Subway, handles the hordes passing through on their way somewhere else, and has even handily managed commuters ascending and descending to & from the Pan Am Building for nearly half of it’s existence. Throngs of tourists now clog the Main Concourse, and while its more crowded than ever I remember it in my 30+ years in NYC, I do wonder what the Apple Store and Shake Shack will mean to those simply trying to use the building for its intended purpose – moving people. It is a testament to the remarkable utility and beauty of that building, whose designers might never have imagined the complexities of the modern urban world.
    GCT turns 100 in early 2013…..

    Reply
  4. Christopher

    It’s weird to me that NYers have an affinity for Tower Records. It was never on my itinerary when visiting NYC in my 20s. Not when there were great small record stores. But I suppose like how going to the Apple Store Cube is something special even if for NYers … so too would be the Tower Records even if you could find them in any mall.

    Reply
    1. Marc Shepherd

      I remember when Tower Records was a much beloved store. Sure, there were great small record stores too. But they were…small. None of them had the broad selection that Tower had, under one roof.

      Of course, once the Internet came along, Tower was no longer essential, and that’s why it’s gone.

      Reply
      1. SEAN

        I loved Tower as well.

        Will be interesting to see what crowd controls Apple has ready if any.

        If you go to an Apple store durring or just after a product launch, you cant get near the store at all. Look at what happened when the Iphone 4s came out, lines were out the door litterally. Wait til the Iphone 5 comes out next year, the madness will repeat itself.

        Reply
    2. Wayne’s World

      Tower Records had a huge, all encompassing selection. It served as more than just a retail outlet–it was a library, a school, a place for people to gather…a place to LEARN about music without getting lost in a digital black hole…a place to receive wisdom from the experts who ran the individual departments…it was the home of an ACTUAL community (not a virtual community; quaint, eh?). Yes, it was overpriced and part of a chain. But it was those other things, too–and it co-existed for years with New York’s great specialty music stores which served a separate and important purpose. Now, they are all gone (or almost all gone). And the experience of serendipitous discovery on a Saturday afternoon has been replaced by still more time in front of a screen.

      Reply
      1. Steve

        I go back even further to the 1970’s when the record store at GCT was Disc-O-Mat, a local New York record store chain later acquired by Crazy Eddie. I bought many great albums at that store after taking the Metro North train (Then the Penn Central train!) into GCT.

        Reply
  5. John-2

    Being above the Concourse level — and the Concourse itself being below the street level — should give Apple and the MTA some crowd control options when it comes to where to put the lines on product debut days. You’ll still have people looking for the store entering the terminal through the normal portals, but proper signage can get them out of the way of commuters, subway passengers and those trying to access other stores on the main level.

    Reply
  6. ZZ914

    I think the differences in space usage that you partly assign to generational differences can also be accounted for in the difference between a restaurant and a shop. With the exception of the extremes (the most informal eating places, the most formal stores) a shop will always tend to be a more porous transient space. Today it’s an Apple store that affords your generation a stoping place – fifty years ago a bookstore or newsstand in that location would have provided the same. You and your grandfather may be different in the details – he might have been buying cigarettes or setting his watch to match the GCT clock, while you would be checking your email etc, but in both cases, a shop is the easier space to do so than a restaurant. I am not a huge Apple consumer, but I will be more likely to visit the GCT store if only to take in the view below, than I ever would have been at Metrazur.

    Reply
  7. Ed

    The funny thing about Grand Central Station is that it was designed by Vanderbilt to be, well, a central station, all trains in and out of New York would stop there, as opposed to having lots of stations on the perimeter of the city. But this was before the Pennsylvania Railroad built a rail tunnel under the Hudson. Ironically, New York got its Grand Central Station in the current Penn Station.

    I’m wondering how much it would cost to extend the Hudson rail tunnels to Grand Central Station and make Grand Central the main station for trains entering and leaving the city, as opposed to retrofitting the main post office to serve as a train station. I’m sure its much more and absurdly impractical, but it would avoid the headaches of the Moynihan Station plan.

    As for the store, isn’t it going to be on a balcony that was installed relatively recently, as part of the restoration of Grand Central? If so, this is probably a clever way to do this. Commuters did without using that staircase in the past and presumably could in the future. Though I’m wondering why Vanderbilt Hall, which sits empty much of the time, wasn’t used instead.

    Reply
    1. Walter

      Commuters don’t ascend that staircase, because it leads to nowhere (there is a service/emergency staircase back there, but that’s about it). But the elevators that will service the store (over by track 21) are also busy elevators for accessing the Lower Level and the lower level platforms. They also lead to Metro-North space above (such as the RTC) that is secure from the public.

      The elevator access is one problem, but new product launches are going to be hard to control. The Graybar Passage is probably the only space that can allow a queue with switchbacks, but the kiosks would have to be removed in the center of the passage because the track portals on one side and the businesses on the other would not allow taking up an entire wall. The stairs down to the Lower Level also cannot be blocked. Plus, would they allow Grand Central to stay open past 2 a.m., which is not likely because of cleaning and the homeless problem, and would the police allow people to line up on 42nd Street or Lexington or close Vanderbilt for a staging area while the building is closed?

      Vanderbilt Hall is always used for temporary installations, such as the current Christmas Fair, and is seldom empty.

      Reply
    2. Alon Levy

      I’m wondering how much it would cost to extend the Hudson rail tunnels to Grand Central Station and make Grand Central the main station for trains entering and leaving the city

      The first part would not cost too much; the second would cost a lot more. The reason is that a Penn-GCT connection is much more valuable for commuter traffic, which would saturate it as soon as it opened, than for intercity traffic. Penn is fine as a train station; its problem is lack of connection to the East Side, and that’s what a connection would fix. To make every train a Grand Central train, first the connection would need four tracks (expensive since many of the available ROWs, e.g. 31st Street, are only wide enough for two), and second the curve radius would be so low that intercity trains would squeal (commuter trains can have shorter cars), and this would cost even more money in takings.

      Reply
  8. Wayne’s World

    My point about the restaurant as opposed to the Apple Store was this, Ben…the bars and cafes are gathering points where people can both enjoy, absorb and experience the magnificent Grand Central space in a leisurely relaxed manner– and have a social experience in which they actually have conversation with other human beings in person. As I understood it, that was one of the goals of the planners who re-opened that space to the public. It melded the space and the social experience. Yes, that Apple store will be a nice place to read your email, no doubt. But it takes the space and adjusts the focus inward to more little screens…rather than adjusting the focus

    Reply
  9. Wayne’s World

    I pressed “submit” too soon on the post. Here’s the complete one:

    My point about the restaurant as opposed to the Apple Store was this, Ben…the bars and cafes are gathering points where people can both enjoy, absorb and experience the magnificent Grand Central space in a leisurely relaxed manner– and have a social experience in which they actually have conversation with other human beings in person. As I understood it, that was one of the goals of the planners who re-opened that space to the public. It melded the space and the social experience. Yes, that Apple store will be a nice place to read your email, no doubt. But it takes the space and adjusts the focus inward to more little screens…rather than adjusting the focus toward a vista that embraces the glorious Grand Central space that is one of New York’s treasure. It’s now a portal the digital realm rather than a living room for grandeur.

    Reply
  10. Jerrold

    I still miss the OLD Grand Central.
    The huge clock and the Kodak picture were New York City icons.
    Putting in that second Grand Staircase was just a silly act of make-believe, as if to pretend that it had been there all along. T

    Reply
    1. Jerrold

      Because of some glitch, my comment got posted in the middle of my writing it!

      The last line was supposed to be:

      The only improvement that really DID make sense was the installation of escalators between the levels.

      Reply
      1. Jerrold

        Further thoughts on GrandCentral: Of course, what was ALSO good about the massive renovations was “Grand Cenrtal North”, the network of passages giving direct access between the platforms and 47th and 48th Sts. What, though, was sort of silly was the renaming of the Upper Level and Lower Level as respectively Main Concourse and Dining Concourse. Why not stick with the clearest possible names?

        Reply

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