The long-awaited deal for Apple’s sprawling subterranean store in the GM building was recently finalized—but only after landlord Harry Macklowe promised Steve Jobs he could take his big $9 million glass cube with him at the end of the lease. Techno aesthete Jobs personally designed the 32-foot-by-32-foot box that will mark the store’s entrance on the Fifth Avenue plaza (formerly home to a T.G.I.Friday’s). “Steve Jobs felt that he created the cube so he owned it,” says Apple broker Robert Futterman, noting that Macklowe wanted it to stay put. “At the eleventh hour, that was the biggest issue.” Macklowe had aggressively wooed Jobs, flying out to California twice and offering well below market rent of $1,000 per square foot for the 24,000-square-foot store set to open in the spring. At the end of the twenty-year lease, Jobs must replace the cube with a comparable structure before hauling it off. Apple didn’t return calls, and Macklowe declined to comment.

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