![]() “The point of the meeting,” Shannon recalled, “was that Steve wanted to show Harry what his vision was for that site. The answer, according to four people in the room - Macklowe, Backus, Bohlin, and Shannon - is that the cube was the brainchild of the late Steve Jobs. What happened next has long been the subject of speculation and some dispute: Who came up the idea of placing a 30‐foot square glass cube - the world’s “smallest skyscraper” - in the middle of the GM Building plaza? In that lightbulb moment, an unused basement that had caused headaches for its owners for more than 40 years morphed into what is arguably the most famous retail space in the world. Bohlin and Karl Backus from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the designers of the Apple Store in Soho. “It would be open 24/7.” The meeting included Macklowe’s longtime design collaborator Dan Shannon and the architects Peter Q. The Apple team started talking about a flagship store that would be groundbreaking in almost every aspect,” he said. “He’s wearing this black turtleneck, he’s wearing black jeans … it was terrific. ![]() Out in Cupertino, Macklowe hit it off immediately with Jobs. How Apple Pay Will Cause You to Buy More Useless Junk He pestered George Blankenship, Apple’s vice-president of real estate, until he was invited to a meeting with Jobs in November 2003. Macklowe had a feeling that his best bet for really transforming the property from a prestigious relic into a vibrant commercial property lay with Apple, which was on the verge of blowing up into a retail titan several years into Steve Jobs’s second stint as CEO. In 2003, when the still-aspiring property mogul Harry Macklowe finally hit the big-time with his purchase of the iconic GM Building for $1.4 billion in borrowed funds, one of his first concerns was how to fix the “problematic plaza,” as industry insiders and architects called the large and rather useless open space that extended from the front entrance to Fifth Avenue. But few people realize that it exists because of a real estate developer who had just taken the biggest gamble of his life, and needed to solve a problem - and because he knew just how to play mind games with Steve Jobs. Though it has been open for less than a decade, the Apple store under the glass cube at the base GM building is already one of the best-known and most successful retail sites in the world. The scene will almost certainly repeat itself in a few months when the new Apple Watches arrive. What might have appeared like civic unrest in another time or place was just business as usual at Apple’s flagship store during the release of a new product - in this case, the iPhone 6. Camera crews looked on, recording the event. ![]() Thousands of people stood in a mass, separated by rows of metal barriers. On September 19, there was a mob scene around a large glass cube at the corner of 57 th Street and Fifth Avenue.
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