Best Places to Live 2024: Avon by Jacob DeSmit ... 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 rea...