Apple Store in Highland Village closed for remodeling project
Need a new MacBook? Want a sporty new band for your Apple Watch? Need a Genius to figure out why your iPhone just won’t turn on?
Don’t bother heading to the Highland Village Apple Store. It’s closed, its trademark glass walls swathed in a light blue material, while it undergoes a face-lift. Apple isn’t yet saying when it will reopen.
The store, which originally opened in March 2012, has been shuttered since July 28. The Highland Village store is the most recent Apple Store to be remodeled in the Houston area; both the Galleria and Memorial City Mall stores were reworked last year.
An Apple spokesperson did not provide details on what the new store will look like, but two other stores with similar designs — glass walls with a curved glass top — in Palo Alto and Santa Monica, Calif., may provide clues. In those California stores, Apple has placed live foliage.
Apple has been redoing its
stores to expand its Today at Apple program, which provides classes and learning sessions. That includes an area with modular seating and a video wall for multimedia presentations.
The renovations also remove the trademark Genius Bar, where customers in the past have queued up to get help with ailing Macs and Apple devices. In the newer design, Geniuses work with customers on issues on smaller tables throughout the stores.
The Highland Village store has been the target of smash-and-grab thieves twice in about a year. In June 2018, burglars drove a truck into a glass panel and attached door and made off with store merchandise, which an employee said was rendered inoperable.
The store was hit in a similar fashion July 10 this year, just over two weeks before it was closed for remodeling.