The Downtown Exchange Transforms Zanesville Building

Brian Diamond felt like Zanesville needed more. So, with the help of his wife, Mary, and his friends Cara and Judd Dodson, he remade the former Olde Towne Antique Mall into The Downtown Exchange. It has a first-floor food hall and a coworking space upstairs with desks and three conference rooms.

“Zanesville has 1,000 people that work in downtown every day, and we had one place that served sandwiches and you could get coffee,” Brian Diamond says. “We just didn’t have a vibrant place in downtown for coffee, for food [or to] see community members.”

The Downtown Exchange’s main-floor food hall houses locals such as Zanesville’s Pizzeria 1880 and Chapman’s Coffee House, which originated 15 miles away in New Concord. Haya Hibachi and the Columbus-based burger and sandwich shopHot Mess are here too. The Dodsons’ Lucky Jupiter Bar has craft and domestic beers on tap as well as a full liquor selection and pays homage to the Jupiter Department Store that once called the building home.

“We have less than 10% crossover between every single menu,” Diamond says of the food lineup, which also includes Bee Sweet Desserts, Tacology, Taste of Greece and Woods Meat & Deli. “It’s such a unique food experience, and each vendor is truly offering something different.”

Live music completes the feel of a neighborhood gathering place, as The Downtown Exchange brings in musicians to play guitar during the weekend dinner rush, when often all 120 chairs inside the hall are filled.

“The support from the community is overwhelming,” Cara Dodson says. “You get off work and pop in for a beer, then you have the workforce, you’ve got the bankers, you’ve got the people that bring their families in … it’s a great collaboration.” 

527 Main St., Zanesville 43701, 740/683-5841, downtown-exchange.com