2012 Opening

Secret Highland Village Apple store to be a duplicate of one on New York City'sUpper West Side

Observers speculate that Houston's new Apple store will borrow design from onein New York's Upper West Side.
Photo via GDeluxe.com
Right now, the construction site is obscured from view.
Photo by Clifford Pugh

The construction site at 4012 Westheimer in Highland Village has been shrouded in secrecy for some time, after computer giant Apple signed a lease in January 2011 and then performed an unexpectedly large "partial demolition" in April.

CultureMap first reported that Apple was moving into Highland Village in November, but the notoriously secret company has refused to discuss any potential plans.

Now that construction is nearing completion and the design itself is taking shape, local Apple aficionado Tracy Evans had a friend draw up a rendition of the future retail spot. Evans personally scoped out the veiled storefront after dark, when "interior work lights transform the glass walls and ceiling into a glowing shape two stories tall, revealing the unmistakable curve of Apple’s patented store design."

One architecture critic described the building as "a pavilion of marble and sheer glass walls. . . a composition as austerely purposeful as a classic Greek temple."

That original design, conceived by Pennsylvania-based firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, comes from a store in New York City's Upper West Side. One architecture critic described the building as "a pavilion of marble and sheer glass walls . . . a composition as austerely purposeful as a classic Greek temple."

The iconic building has a glass facade that extends to the vaulted (and insulated) glass ceiling, bound by thick walls of Tennessee marble, with display tables of blond wood standing in rows along the stone floor. No check-out counters, no visible ventilating grilles and nothing unsightly: All stock and storage is relegated to the basement, which is accessed by a glass spiral staircase.

Evans expects that Houston's first out-of-mall Apple store will be a smaller version of the original, with some alterations. ifoAppleStore.com reports that there will be several differences in design, including a glass back wall and storage held in an adjacent area.

Some people might be understandably concerned about the impact of Houston's extreme elements — overbearing sun, sweltering heat, suffocating humidity, the usually-plentiful coastal rainfall and Texas-sized hail — on a building constructed mostly from glass. The Apple store is expected to open in early 2012. We shall see.

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Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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