Did you know that you have to have at least 5,000 residents to make the leap from Village to City? This was just one of a hundred things the Executive Arrangements staff learned on our driving tour of Orange Village with Orange Mayor Kathy Mulcahy. She has been at this job for 24 years (so she is a walking encyclopedia).
Our morning on an Orange school bus (thanks for driving us Dave!) also included seeing parts of the adjacent neighborhoods that feed into the Orange Schools. Those cities include Pepper Pike, Woodmere, Moreland Hills and Hunting Valley. Apparently, school district boundaries have nothing to do with municipal lines. Small parts of Bedford Heights, Warrensville Heights, and Solon also use the Orange Schools, go figure!
We also learned how Orange Village, seeing that their lack of sidewalks was a competitive disadvantage, teamed up with Pinecrest Development to underwrite meandering “recreational trails.” These trails do double duty as sidewalks and are a win-win. Residents have no upkeep responsibilities for “trails,” and they connect community members to their local shops and amenities.
Orange Village Mayor, Kathy Mulcahy
Other facts we learned about Orange Village include:
- They have just over 3,000 residents.
- They have mostly modestly-sized post-WWII homes on large lots.
- The Orange Schools have roughly 150 in the graduating class and all students are one campus on Chagrin Boulevard from Pre-K through high school (and in a throwback to another generation, kids are dropped by school buses at the end of their driveways, not on the corner). Mayor Mulcahy stressed that Orange students are exposed to “lots of really cool things that aren’t reflected in the state school report card including multiple field trips every year and tons of arts programming.”
- While regionalism is rarer when it comes to shared city services between suburbs in NE Ohio, Orange Village and the surrounding communities are setting an example. They work with a shared public school district, library, recreation center and senior center.
Home in Lakes of Orange
- Orange Village Community Park offers 60 acres of green space for recreational outdoor fun including a dog park, amphitheater, playground on steroids, hiking trails, a Japanese zen garden, sports fields, a golf putting green with sand traps, and more.
- Beechmont Country Club is the only Jewish golf club left in the region and is a thriving social and athletic scene. Across the street in Pepper Pike is the Cleveland Racquet Club which offers tennis and platform tennis.
- Residents have the new Pinecrest as their “downtown,” although they also have shopping and restaurants available along Chagrin Boulevard at Village Square, Eton, and at Lander Circle.
- Orange Arts Center offers adult & children’s classes and gallery space for shows.
- Orange contains many large subdivisions with the idyllic cul-de-sac suburban experience. This includes the new Lakes of Orange, Ohio’s first Green Certified Community under Home Innovation’s National Green Building Standard.
Our staff enjoying the monthly EA University with a visit to the Orange Village Community Garden
This is just a fraction of the insider info we have on more than 60 neighborhoods that surround Cleveland and Akron! Our expertise is available to candidates and newcomers that Executive Arrangements is hired to work with. If you need a deeper dive to understand your new town, or if you are a company trying to recruit from outside NE Ohio, EA could be an invaluable resource for you. Call us at 216.231.9311.