Time Is On My Side: Bedford Avenue building bought for peanuts sold for $6 million 37 years later

Eye On Real Estate

March 5, 2014 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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He’s the Six Million Dollar Man – the real-life version.

(Raise your hand if you watched that 1970s television series.)

Williamsburg landlord George Wanat was paid a whopping $6 million last May for his majestic though graffiti-covered building on the corner of Bedford Avenue and Grand Street, city Finance Department records reveal.

Stifle your envy, if possible. Wanat had bought 292 Bedford Ave. for $22,600 at a city auction in 1976. The deed was signed by David Dinkins – who was the City Clerk at the time, not the Mayor.

The new owner of the five-story white brick property with 20 apartments plus storefronts is 292 Bedford LLC, whose managing member is Joseph Banda.

Garry Steinberg of real estate brokerage Lee & Associates just served as the landlord’s rep in a lease for 1,500 square feet of retail space there. The rent is $200 per square foot per year, with a 10-year lease term and an option for a five-year lease extension after that, Steinberg said.

Corcoran’s Roni Dotan represented the tenant in the deal.

Incoming tenant Ivan Kohut plans to build a restaurant that Grubstreet.com says will be Brooklyn’s first Flemish “gastro-brasserie.” Kohut is the owner of Radegast Hall & Biergarten on nearby N. 3rd Street.

The city Buildings Department issued permits in January to “renovate existing commercial space for a new tenant” on the first floor and cellar and do mechanical and plumbing work.

There are two other storefronts available, one of them 500 square feet, the other 1,000 square feet, which are being offered separately or combined into one space.