Grand Canyon Diner returns to Montague Street in Armando’s space

July 25, 2018 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Eagle photo by Francesca Norsen Tate

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The Grand Canyon Diner, which was a neighborhood fixture at 141 Montague St. before it closed in 2015, is returning to the main street of Brooklyn Heights – in the same next-door space vacated earlier this year by the classic Italian restaurant Armando’s Restaurant and Bar.

Armando’s was a mainstay in the Heights since 1936, but longtime owner Peter Byros sold the building at 143 Montague St. for $7.418 million in February and closed the restaurant in May, the Brooklyn Eagle’s Mary Frost reported. Byros had shuttered the restaurant once before, in 2008, and rented the space to Spicy Pickle, but when that eatery closed the following year, he reopened Armando’s. Grand Canyon Diner owner Gonzalo Carretto signed a 15-year lease for the ground-floor space at a rent of $27,500 per month, and the diner is slated to open there in the fall, according to Commercial Observer.

Carretto also owns another Grand Canyon Diner in Park Slope as well as Mex Carroll’s Diner, which offers American and Mexican comfort food, in Brooklyn’s Columbia Street Waterfront District. Eric Goldschmidt of Meridian Capital’s retail leasing division, which represented both sides in the Montague Street transaction, told Commercial Observer that the building’s current owner, Uri Koptiev, “decided to go with Gonzalo because of his 25-year history in the neighborhood.”