I just registered here to address this thread. I've been consuming Apple products since 2003 and have lived five blocks away from the World Trade Center for the past five years (Manhattan for eight).
Fifteen years feels more like too late than too soon. I first visited NYC in the summer of 2002, and I have only personally known the site to be a place of debris and construction until quite recently. As a proud resident of the neighbourhood, I've been waiting many years for the dark times to pass and for the Financial District to be reborn. I have friends and family who lived near and worked in the original WTC complex, and they too want to restore a sense of normalcy and vibrancy after all this time. To live in fear and sorrow in this neighbourhood is to grant the terrorists a second victory; instead, the World Trade Center is being rightfully and triumphantly rebuilt, with business, commerce, the arts, entertainment, great dining–and most importantly, good spirits–returning to the complex. This is how it should be, not only out of respect for the original planners and architects who had their great investment and realised dream of a public wonder cut short by terror, but for the neighbourhood itself, its residents, and its well-being. From talking to friends and relatives of the victims, I seriously doubt that they would want the WTC to remain a hole in the ground, untouched by life and laden with gloom. New Yorkers move on and come back bigger and better than ever.
It has always been a pain in the ass to make a trip to the Apple Store when you live at the southern tip of the island. The closest one thus far has been the SoHo branch, which, while not terribly far away, is certainly an inconvenience. I'm honestly surprised that Apple hadn't opened a store in the Financial District a long time ago, given its dense population and overall popularity. My only guess is that as the first Apple stores opened prior to 9/11, there might have been preliminary plans to open one in the original WTC mall, especially since Westfield was planning to completely remodel the mall as the new and improved "Shoppingtown World Trade Center" in the summer of 2001. After 9/11, they perhaps held off on opening one in Manhattan's Financial District because, in their wisdom, they knew that the mall would be rebuilt into the grand spectacle that it is today. It looks like their waiting has paid off, and, ultimately, there is no better location in the entire neighbourhood than the new Westfield World Trade Center; the Oculus itself looks like something that sprang out of Apple's imagination.
I heard that 'Apple WTC' will occupy both subterranean levels of the mall, spanning the entire northwest quadrant, but OP seemed to indicate that it would only be the lower level. Could it be that the lower level is opening first, with the upper level coming later (perhaps due to construction issues and placement beside a temporarily dead corridor)? I guess we'll find out very soon.
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So, so true. They should talk to people who actually live there, let alone have actually set foot in the complex.
lol
