Finally! Apple is headed to Billyburg, the New York Post reports

December 9, 2014 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

It doesn't look like much now, but once renovated, 247 Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg will be the home of Brooklyn's first Apple store, the New York Post reported Tuesday. Photo by Ben Altarescu

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Finally! Brooklyn is getting an Apple store to call its own.

This long-awaited affirmation of Brooklyn’s hotness as a retail venue arrived Tuesday via New York Post real estate columnist Steve Cuozzo, who reported that the tech icon signed a lease for its first-ever Brooklyn location at 247 Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg.

“It’s about time,” Christopher Havens, head of the commercial division of aptsandlofts.com, told the Brooklyn Eagle.

There are five Apple stores in Manhattan, and one in Staten Island.

The famed maker of iPhones and iPads had looked for space around Atlantic Terminal in Downtown Brooklyn but hadn’t found a location to its liking, Havens noted.

“Williamsburg makes a lot of sense,” Havens told the Eagle. “A lot of their customers are there.”

Apple’s lease at 247 Bedford is long-term, for 20,000 square feet, the Post columnist wrote, citing “brokerage community sources.”

Peter Braus, whose firm Lee & Associates is marketing the retail space at 247 Bedford, answered an Eagle query by saying, “Sorry but I’m not authorized to comment.”

A construction fence and netting keep passersby from seeing how construction is progressing at the building on the corner of Bedford and N. 3rd and N. 4th streets.

The work should be done in April 2015 — but it’s not known when Apple will arrive, the Post reported.

A rendering on Lee Associates’ website depicts the finished building with a reddish brick façade punctuated by high arches filled in with rectangular glass window panes.

In 2012, an LLC with RedSky Capital principal Benjamin Bernstein as president paid $66 million for 235 Bedford Ave. and 247 Bedford Ave., city Finance Department records indicate.

The Bedford Avenue location had reportedly been on Apple’s radar for some time. It was one of two sites Apple was considering for a store last December, The Real Deal reported then. The other site, the publication said, was Fort Greene development BAM South at 286 Ashland Place.

Former Borough President Marty Markowitz spent years trying to get Apple to come to Brooklyn.

In 2010, he made a video of himself typing a pleading email to Apple founder Steve Jobs on an iPad.

“Just like ‘Apple,’ Brooklyn is now an international ‘brand,’ signifying the coolest place on earth to live, work, play and create,” Markowitz wrote to Jobs, who never responded.