A graduate of Avon High School, class of 2010, I last claimed Avon as home in 2012. Having spent most of my formative years here, I thought profiling what makes it one of Cleveland’s best suburbs sounded easy — I’d know the city like the back of my hand, right?
Based on census data, Avon’s population has exploded throughout the aughts, jumping in total population from 11,446 in 2000, just two years after my family moved to town, to 24,847 as of 2020. Housing developments now take up much of the space I remember being farmland or woods, while a dizzying number of new restaurants, car washes and retail businesses have sprung up in shopping plazas galore.
Some of my fondest memories in Avon took place while working in the Caribou Coffee formerly found in Avon Commons, the shopping center most known to out-of-towners. Here, a host of regulars would stop in to share life updates with our staff, many spending hours just hanging out to read newspapers or meet with colleagues. There was a real sense of community that feels lost in the Starbucks and Dunkin’ locations that draw much of Avon’s coffee business today.
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Other communities we spent a day visiting:
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Hudson is a Walkable, Family-Friendly Haven
Willoughby is All About Coolness
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Seeking a fix of more than just caffeine, I found it in Black Key Coffee, an independent business founded by Andrew and Devon Blakley that exemplifies my old-school preference for what a coffee shop should be.
While the lavender-vanilla latte I sampled was enough to keep me wanting more, the tiny operation’s friendly atmosphere is what kept me hanging around. I observed a few instances of Andrew, who roasts the shop’s coffee beans and operates as a barista, nearly completing regulars’ drinks before they had made it to the register.
According to the Blakleys, their customers have even encouraged the shop to close down for two and a half weeks, due to the birth of their daughter earlier this year.
“That’s been a super cool thing for us, with being so small,” Andrew says. “Every time I told people, ‘We’re going to close because our daughter’s born, and I don’t know exactly when the [reopen] is going to be,’ they said ‘good.’ The community was just happy for us.”
It doesn’t take long to find a similar communal spirit in other parts of the city, as I found when searching for a place to hike. Avonites looking to join a gym have a few different options, including the YMCA, University Hospital’s The Fitness Center and Planet Fitness. But for visitors seeking a subscription-free way to exercise and build muscle, a hidden gem can be found behind the city’s police station and post office.
RATED: 2024 Cleveland's Top 20 Suburbs by Cleveland Magazine
The City of Avon Fitness Court is a bright blue hub of steel bars that park-goers may use to train seven essential strengthening movements, including squats, pushes, pulls, bends and core. It is part of a larger community park that features a zone commemorating local war veterans, a children’s play set and the Avon Historical Walk, a trail in the woods lined with placards describing the city’s earliest history, as curated by the Avon Historical Society.
The park is an occasional meeting place for the regional chapter of F3, or “Fitness, Fellowship and Faith,” which is a national network of men’s groups that meet for peer-led workouts. Bill Fischer, a resident since 2004, calls his membership a game changer.
“Personally, I love running, and I run all over the place,” says Fischer. “I don’t know that a lot of people know about or utilize [the park], but I do, and I love it.”
Keeping a consistent exercise routine may be a necessity for locals who prefer to dine out in the city, as the influx of families appears to have inspired a boom of familiar fast food chains. Head east across Chester Road, and you’ll find a seemingly endless selection of freshly-built options, from Raising Cane’s to Longhorn Steakhouse to Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers.
Describing the city’s expansion as “too much, too fast,” Nancy McGhee, a longtime resident who graduated from Avon High School in 1963, gives credit to the city for compartmentalizing this growth into an area that protects parks in other areas of the city.
“I think they’ve done an excellent job by shoving all that commercial down on old Chester Road, which used to just be a dirt, cinder road,” says McGhee. “Making [it] four lanes — and five where they had to — is the best thing they thought of.”
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