Rating the Suburbs 2012: For the Eco-Minded

Avon Lake

A layer of black topsoil lies waiting in anticipation.

The half-acre near Avon Lake's Troy Intermediate School will be home to a 130-plot community garden filled with radishes, carrots, tomatoes and other vegetables by summer.

Wood chips will be spread out to form winding walkways through the garden, while raised plots will be handicapped accessible. A 7-foot fence will keep out deer and other animals.

All these details are important to community garden co-chairman Dale Cracas and the others who have been working for years to bring this idea of a community garden to fruition.

"My wife and I have had a garden for most of our married life," says Cracas, who moved to Avon Lake for a teaching job in 1970. "I used to make my own bread-and-butter pickles. But you can't keep the deer out of your backyard, so the community garden will enable us to [do that]."

Forty years ago, Avon Lake still had grape vineyards growing next to football fields and several large farms growing corn and soybeans. There was also an orchard, but that is long gone.

While the housing tracts and golf courses have absorbed most of the farms, Avon Lake still appeals to outdoor enthusiasts with its 14 parks, lake access with fishing pier and boat launch, and a 2-year-old, $4.2 million aquatic center with two giant water slides, diving boards, a spray ground and lazy river.

Cracas, who spends two to three hours each day working on the garden, says it's for more than those with a green thumb. He hopes to donate some of the fruits of his labor to the local community resource center to help feed the needy. Several of the 4-by-12-foot plots, which sold for $25, have been reserved for the highly rated Avon Lake schools to use for hands-on learning and to raise food for the cafeteria.

Then Cracas points across the garden to a grove of trees. "We could put in picnic tables and barbecues over there," he says. "It's just one of those things where you don't just go to the community garden to garden. It's a social thing, too."

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Good neighbor: Avon has seen an explosion of retail and housing development in the past 15 years with the addition of Avon Commons and the Highland Park and Red Tail developments. The economic growth has helped the city — about 85 percent of city services are paid for by people who work but don't live in Avon. With newer housing options and businesses such as a Cleveland Clinic facility that opened last winter, the new Interstate 90 interchange at Nagle Road will streamline traffic along state Route 83. "That's a real positive, because it gets kind of crowded over there," says Mayor James Smith.

Like-Minded city: In a town where 80 percent the homes lie in a National Register Historic District, Shaker Heights is in touch with its roots. The 100-year-old suburb recently received $90,000 from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program to turn a vacant lot, where a deteriorating house once stood, into an orchard of apple and cherry trees. It's fitting for a community that was developed by the Van Sweringen brothers as Ohio's first garden-styled suburb. "It's a large corner that's an entry to the [Lomond] neighborhood," says planning director Joyce Braverman. "Already people can use it, and it's really greened up the corner."