Chicago flagship Apple Retail store roof not well suited for snow, ice

Apple's North Michigan Ave., Chicago retail store is having a problem with snow and ice falls off the roof, and has roped off areas of the surrounding court to protect shoppers.

According to a post made on Thursday by Chicago-local blog Spudart, the store was designed without the area's harsh winters in mind. There are no gutters to catch melting snow, and as such, is unsafe around the perimeter.

This isn't the first time that the store has caught the media's attention for design matters. In October, the store announced it was dimming the lights nightly during migration season after a watchdog agency cited the location for bird impacts.

The new store takes the place of an abandoned food court, and anchors one end of the North Michigan Avenue shopping district. Plans and architectural renderings filed by the Zeller Realty Group, in 2015 detail a 20,000-square-foot glass, steel and wood building.

The initial build cost was pegged at $62 million, about triple the cost of the Union Square, San Francisco location. However, documents filed just a few weeks later trimmed the cost down to $26.9 million, more in line with other Apple stand-alone locations.