Apple's Brickell City Centre store in downtown Miami to open on March 25

Apple's first store in downtown Miami — Brickell City Centre — will see a grand opening on Saturday, March 25, the company has announced.

The new shop is located on the second floor of the West Block building at 701 South Miami Avenue, near Saks Fifth Avenue. It will begin business at 10 a.m. local time, though no regular store hours have been made public.

The outlet has 13-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, and a forum space with an oversized video display, according to TechCrunch. About 100 people will work there, almost half of them speaking Spanish — something important in a city with a large Cuban demographic.

Brickell City Centre is a new open-air shopping complex spanning some 500,000 square feet, also incorporating a hotel, offices, restaurants, and condominiums. Much of it is aimed at a wealthy audience.

Apple has several other stores in the Miami area, such as Dadeland, The Falls, and Lincoln Road.

Two other locations will be opening internationally on the same day. These include Jinmao Place in Nanjing, and the Schildergasse store in Cologne, Germany.

Totally new U.S. stores have become rare in the past few years, since Apple's domestic coverage is already fairly widespread. Instead the company has been growing internationally, or relocating and expanding existing shops.

3 Comments

huckdaisy1 64 comments · 8 Years

About 7 years ago

With brick and mortar store format taking a beating, Apple just keeps opening stores all around the globe. I hope its not too much.

macxpress 5910 comments · 16 Years

About 7 years ago

huckdaisy1 said:

With brick and mortar store format taking a beating, Apple just keeps opening stores all around the globe. I hope its not too much.

Unlike a lot of retail stores, Apple provides a completely different retail experience. The stores actually serve a real purpose. Not only can you look at the items in the store, but they're fully functional, you can purchase them and also get them serviced. You get stores like Sears, Macy's, etc that are doing very little to get someone into their stores and then if they do, they're not spending very much money if any. They're just riding on what always made them successful in the past. Unfortunately, there's an online bookstore (Amazon) that seems to be killing their business these days. Since Amazon doesn't sell Apple products, nor do they service them Apple stores are still a very viable product.

Also, Apple is smart as to where they put them. Of course, everyone would like an Apple Store in their local mall, but Apple does research as to where their stores make the most sense, typically high traffic areas where people can spend money. This is why you don't see them in a lot of malls because a lot of malls cannot support an Apple Store. This stores are not cheap to run so Apple has to make sure each store can support itself financially.

Rayz2016 6957 comments · 8 Years

About 7 years ago

huckdaisy1 said:

With brick and mortar store format taking a beating, Apple just keeps opening stores all around the globe. I hope its not too much.

Well, weighing Angela Ahrendts's experience of running a multimillion dollar retail chain against yours, then I'm going to plump for "it's not too much".