as of September 11, 2003

Construction for the future San Francisco Apple store at One Stockton Street began in early August. The building at the tri-corner of Stockton, Ellis and Markets Streets was completely demolished, and an entirely new building will be constructed. The demolition was performed by DPR Construction, and was expected to take four weeks. However, final work was still underway when these photos were taken. The building was previously occupied by a Sephora cosmestic store, which has moved up the street and around the corner.

By the way, DPR also built Apple's Logistics Center in Elk Grove near Sacramento and the Pixar Animation headquarters in Emeryville. According to an employee, the Elk Grove project was worth $1.9 million, but Apple subsequently gave DPR projects more than $60 million over nine years.

According to city permit records, the cost of the demolition and remodel for the store was $8.5 million.

This site is just two blocks south of Union Square, the traditional center of the San Francisco's downtown district. It's one block away from the Powell Street cable car turnaround, which is a haven for tourists. Just a block in either direction is a Gap store and a CompUSA (which has Apple posters in the window!).

The building is already being promoted as a "flagship" store, similar to those in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. It's expected to have the trademark glass interior stairway like these other stores.

The site is 90 feet on the Ellis St. side and 60 feet on the Stockton St. side, according to documents posted at the site. The property is owned by Deka Immobilien Investments GmBH of Germany, according to the posted permit documents, which also stated that Sephora, the previous tenant of the building, had assigned its interest in the building to Apple Computer.

There has been some speculation that the Apple store would have its own entrance to the local underground mass transit system, BART. In fact, a BART entrance is within the property line of the store. However, the stairway and escalator (closed during demolition) do not arise into the store, but rather onto an entrance on the Stockton St. side of the property right at the corner with Ellis Street. It's likely that the store's design will encourage BART users to slip right into the store from the BART entrance, but that there will be no direct entry into the store.

By the way, I'd previously been told that the existing store would undergo a "major renovation"--this is certainly more than that! One can only assume that, as always, Apple wanted to craft the entire customer experience--and that starts by creating your own building.

Lastly, the building includes a very large full basement that could be used for inventory storage rather than retail space. Also note that the surrounding buildings are 4-stories tall, while it appears that the former building was had just two, much-taller floors. It's likely that Apple will not construct a building with four floors, but rather two taller floors.