Apple store set to open
IT’S the news that will thrill phone fans, geeks and techies to the core.
Birmingham’s new Apple Store is expected to open this month as the eagerly awaited iPhone 7 is launched.
Most of the scaffolding has been peeled off the New Street site and the result is a gleaming look which takes the Grade II-listed one-time banking hall and former Waterstones back to the future.
Several possible opening dates have been mooted but the Post understands it could be as early as the Friday, September 16.
This would tie in with the expected release of the new iPhone 7 which is likely to be launched on September 7.
When it opens, the New Street store will increase Apple’s presence from 4,000 sq ft in the current Bullring shop to 20,000 sq ft.
The 128 New Street address was originally built in 1879 for Midland Bank.
In recent decades it was a sumptuous book store where, in April 2002, people queued all the way round into Stephenson Street for a book signing by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
However, the store closed in November 2015 when Waterstones completed a major overhaul of its neighbouring Art Deco store in High Street.
While the neo-classical detailing of the New Street exterior has been jet-washed, the interior of the property, owned by Hortons’ Estate, is still being trans- formed on Apple’s behalf. The original planning application detailed how a staircase and mezzanine balcony added in the 1990s would be removed to “reinstate the space back to the single generous volume and character when used as a banking hall by Midland Bank”.
A new planning application has been lodged to install two plaques and replace the existing flag.