The Exchange Tavern, long known for its Tybee crab chowder, signature sandwiches and German potato salad, will close its 6710 Waters Ave. location Friday after lunch service, a spokesperson at the restaurant confirmed Monday.
The restaurant’s original location, the Cotton Exchange Tavern and Restaurant on River Street, will remain open.
Savannah banker Tommy Hester, whose Colony Bank on Stephenson Avenue is just around the corner from The Exchange, was surprised and disappointed.
“Where am I going to eat lunch three days a week?” he lamented. “How can that be? The place is always packed.”
Hester conceded he is a lunch patron.
“Maybe the dinner business was slower,” he offered.
Repeated calls and emails to Turner Food and Spirits Co., which owns the Exchange restaurants, were not returned.
Restaurateur Robert Turner purchased the Waters Avenue property in 2001, paying just under $1.1 million assessed value for the former Southside location of the Crystal Beer Parlor, which had been sitting idle since its owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy two years earlier.
Once the transaction was complete, Turner added another $300,000 to redecorate the interior and $30,000 to refurbish the front exterior.
Turner also owns the Pirates’ House, which he purchased in 2006. Popular with tourists and locals alike, the Pirates’ House opened in 1753 as an inn and quickly became a haunt for hard-drinking pirates. It was also the setting for part of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel “Treasure Island.”
