New York City’s fourth Apple Store opened in the city’s Upper West Side yesterday, and it boasts the largest retail space of the company’s 279 locations.

From an article over at Fortune.CNN.com:

It’s a striking edifice, all glass and grey marble. The exterior is dominated by a two-story glass facade, a big white apple logo and a curved glass roof — a first for an Apple Store.

The ground floor interior is classic Apple (AAPL) retail, with 16 stand-alone blond wood tables on roughly 8,500 square feet of retail space — the largest single-floor display of Apple products in the world, according to the company.

It’s pretty crazy that while most retailers are struggling, Apple is prospering.

Apple began building its own outlets in 2001, and they have proved enormously profitable. A record 42.7 million customers visited Apple Stores last quarter, generating $7.6 million in revenue per store, up 15% year over year. All told, Apple Stores brought in $6.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2009, more than the whole company generated ($5.4 billion) in 2001.

“We have the highest performing retail stores on the planet,” boasts Ron Johnson, the former Target marketing whiz who runs Apple’s retail division. Johnson told the press on Thursday that the average Apple Store generates $4,300 per total square foot (including storage space), the equivalent foot for foot of 5 Best Buys and 15 Target stores.

The “significant” stores (what Apple used to call its flagship stores) do much better. According to a Bloomberg report last summer, Apple’s big glass cube on 59th St., across the street from the old Plaza Hotel, is the highest-grossing retail outlet on Fifth Avenue, bringing in an estimated $35,000 per square foot, nearly double the gross of Tiffany’s sales floor and triple Harry Winston’s.

“People forget that when Apple began building stores, everybody said it wouldn’t work,” says Michael Gartenberg, vice president at Interpret, a market research firm. “They ended up redefining retail. Now they’re not just the Nordstrom of technology. They are the new Nordstrom.”

I’m not sure what else there is to say…

I guess I wish Apple would design my loft for me…

But other than that…

OK.

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