When you live in Perth you expect to wait for things, the old joke of WA stands for ‘Wait Awhile’ has been true for many years.
However something is in the air and changes are starting to happen in this sleepy old town lately, one change being Apple are finally coming to town. Back in July of 2009 Australia’s leading Apple community, Mactalk, discovered that Perth would be next in line for the 6th Australian Apple store, but where would the store be?
With stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane scattered between CBD and outer suburb shopping centre locations, the rumours of where the Perth outlet would open where flying around the internet fairly fast.
A few possibilities rumoured were – The high fashion district of King St? The new complex that is being built above the Underground Station? Outer suburb shopping centre of Garden City? … and many others.
A few weeks ago it was finally announced by a City of Perth spokesman and they confirmed it had approved a $2.5 million planning application and building licence for refurbishment of an existing retail site on Hay Street. The chosen outlet is the the former site of the Joynt Venture “lifestyle” store and this is how the store currently looks:
While the building itself isn’t looking that special (yet), the location itself is perfect and right near a new lot of new high end developments happening in Perth. It will be two shops down from Boffins (the designers favourite bookshop), around the corner from the café/fashion strip of King St and such brands as Burberry/Louis Vuitton outlets close by it is clear why Apple has chosen such a spot.
Yesterday on my way home I walked past the location to see what was happening and at this stage it is a whole lot of nothing. The boards are up and the workers were going home. From peering behind the boards it looks like they’ve just spent time clearing out the old stores and combining them all into one large floor space. The building itself extends the full way back onto Wolf Lane and from memory contains high art deco ceilings, so this store has the potential to become a great showcase store for Apple.
As the typical Apple fan, I’ll occasionally walk past and see what is happening and of course keep an update on here.
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Comments ( 3 )
[...] months ago I updated with the location of the Perth Apple store, now many months later it is here. Well not yet, according to this Apple press release doors open [...]
Apple store hits Perth and maybe the iPhone 4 too « SUNKY SPEAKS added these pithy words on Jun 22 10 at 12:17 pm[...] let me just have one more post about it. Looking at this old blog post today and the photos from the weekend really made me remember what a horrible old [...]
Perth Apple store – before and after « SUNKY SPEAKS added these pithy words on Jun 28 10 at 2:36 pm
