Santa Monica Approves 'Apple Glass House' in a Blink of an Eye

No matter how strange or complicated Apple’s plans for a building may be, they’re all getting approved lately, sometimes even without discussion.

It is the case of Apple’s upcoming retail store on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, which features a curved, all-glass roof that should translate into some competition for the company’s flagship outlet on Fifth Avenue, in New York.

Approved at the Santa Monica Planning Commission meeting last night, the store will occupy a space of 8,084 square-feet, and will also have an all-glass entrance.

Attending last night’s meeting was Peggy Clifford, from the Santa Monica Dispatch, who confirmed the good news today, saying the staff had put the project on the Consent Calendar.

The Consent Calendar gets approved as a whole, unless an item is pulled for discussion, according to her report.

Aka "Apple Glass House", the store will take the place of an existing Borders Bookstore on the Third Street Promenade.

It appears that the commissioners approved the Consent Calendar simply because there was nothing to object to Apple’s initiative of putting a gem in the middle of Third Street Promenade.

Even more so, the journalist attending the the meeting said the staff appeared to have been rendered speechless by the design.

This wouldn’t be the first time Apple put a spell on city officials when proposing to break ground to have something big build on city property.

Looking back to how mesmerized Cupertino’s council was when Steve Jobs first presented the plans for a 2.8 million square-foot space-ship campus, who wouldn’t trust Apple with a few more slabs of glass and concrete in Santa Monica?

Apple currently has a store on the Promenade down by Arizona Avenue and just opened its first 2.0 store at the Americana in Glendale.