Pepper Pike Resident Responds to Scene's Ranking of the Worst Suburbs

Pepper Pike’s finest Credit: Raymond Wambsgans/FlickrCC

A couple of weeks ago, Scene ranked the worst of Cleveland Magazine’s best suburbs.

Pepper Pike, which took home the No. 1 spot in the monthly mag’s tabulations, fared a little worse in ours, tying for dead last with 19 others.

That didn’t sit well with Mike, a resident who wrote in to let us know we got it entirely wrong from start to finish.

It’s disappointing to see a professional giving unneeded criticism of another group’s work celebrating what makes a collection of suburbs a fantastic place to live. Being a resident of Pepper Pike for as long as you have been editor-in-chief and being a resident of Cleveland suburbs since you have been with Scene, I can speak to what I have experienced. When we decided to move here we identified what we liked and for us Pepper Pike was it.

Pepper Pike is a terrific and safe community with a fantastic schools system, which is close by to much, but has the feel of being spacious and open, and has the “it” that some think to be the nicest Cleveland suburb, which is what the original article that you discuss is about not Cleveland the city. Many residents from Pepper Pike and other suburbs spend time and money in the city of Cleveland going to many events, frequenting many businesses and earning a living which means paying income tax to the city, but that seems to be lost on you talking about the monetary sucking of the sprawl. Similarly, just because a community is a suburb of Cleveland, doesn’t mean it needs to be located in Cuyahoga County, but that seems lost in the negativity as well. Lastly, mocking people for investing in their homes and property while enjoying amenities of a community they choose to live in feels quite childish and beneath someone that is an editor-in-chief of a publication, but here we are with your sarcasm and all.

Lots of people choose to leave the cities and head to the suburbs when priorities shift from single or newly married life to starting a family, which is why rankings such as safety, education and home value (which the home tends to be people’s largest asset in life) become very important and why Cleveland would fail to make the top 20 or even larger list put in with suburbs when these become the metrics to rank by. Hopefully Cleveland can turn it around when it comes to safety, education and home values, I truly would think that would be a wonderful thing for the residents of Cleveland and all surrounding communities. As for our family, we will continue to enjoy Cleveland Magazine’s top suburb of 2023. Hooray!

Mike

Feel the same? Drop us a line.

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.