Apple will open its first Washington state retail store next month, at Bellevue Square, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It will be a 4,600-square-foot, ground-level store, Apple spokeswoman Jane Rauckhorst told the newspaper. No word on when the store will open.
Bellevue is located three miles east of Seattle, between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, and about ten miles west of the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Bellevue Square has 200 stores and local boutiques and draws 16 million visitors annually.
In a press-analyst conference yesterday, Fred Anderson, Apple’s chief financial officer, said that Apple planned to expand its number of retail stores from the current 53 to 70 by year’s end. Also in the works is an Apple retail store to be located on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.
Apple opened its first store in May 2001. All totaled, its retail outlets see a combined one million visitors per month, the company says.