It appears that Apple is building a giant NeXT cube in the hole in front of the General Motors building.
The Midtown Book writes of that hole,
The sunken plaza, scathingly detested by a majority of people with strong opinions in the city, is actually not so bad. Initially, it was pretty barren and there can be no argument with the fact that this particular site, the major gateway to Central Park and the city’s most elegant heart, absolutely needed no plaza here, to say nothing of a sunken plaza, a type of space that has met with rare success because it requires extra effort on the part of pedestrians to reach and exit.
But, no, the whole thing will be glass, and a mere entrance to the underworld.
In a March 2, 2005 article in The New York Times, David W. Dunlap reported that the Macklowe organization plans to install a 32-foot glass cube in the building’s Fifth Avenue plaza that will serve as an entrance to below-grade retail spaces much like I. M. Pei’s famous glass pyramid serves as an entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris. “The new plaza will be on a single level from 58th to 59th Streets, framed at each corner by low-wide, L-shaped parapets,” wrote Mr. Dunlap, adding that “two shallow pools will flank the cube.” Dan Shannon of Moed de Armas & Shannon is the designer of the new plaza. At the same time, the building is extended its base 10 feet along Madison Avenue to create a two-story retail space. [link added]
Curbed, as usual, has more.