Brown celebrates Coventry with 'Lov for Cov'

Bob Brown and Ori at Spirit Corner near their Coventry Village home.

Robert (Bob) Brown has lived in Cleveland Heights for 47 years. For the past 20, he's been a resident of the Coventry Village neighborhood with his wife, Susan Berger. They share their home with their current dog, a Labradoodle named Ori.

In spring 2023, Brown self-published a 68-page photo essay he authored, Lov for Cov. In it, he provides a loving history of Coventry Village and its unique architecture, people and walkable neighborhood. Brown’s Coventry Village is defined as bordered by Coventry Road on the west, Superior Avenue on the east, Mayfield Road on the north and Euclid Heights Boulevard on the south.

From Marcus M. Brown, who pushed the streetcar and inter-urban rail line through Coventry in about 1903; to the late Rabbi Zalman Kazen, the butcher at the old Coventry Poultry Market; to interviews of the owners of Tommy’s and Mac’s Backs—Lov for Cov has it all. There is a reference copy in the Coventry Village Library, and a pdf of Lov for Cov can be found online at www.citybobbrown.com/single-post/lov-for-cov-coventry-village-in-cleveland-heights.

Brown grew up in Philadelphia and, later, in an adjacent suburb he describes as similar to Coventry but “not nearly as cool."

He started college at the counter-culture Goddard College in rural Vermont, where, Brown recalled, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do as a job,” though he wanted to do "societal good."

His life changed when he read the great urban theorist and activist Jane Jacobs’ book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. “I realized that a small town in rural Vermont was not the place to be to learn about cities,” said Brown, who found a bachelor’s degree program at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) that "was a good fit for my newfound interest in city planning."

(Though Brown didn’t come to study in Northeast Ohio because of it, the region played an important role in America’s history of local zoning regulation and land use planning. In a 1926 landmark case, the Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that land zoning is a valid exercise of government’s police power. Soon thereafter, most local governments in the U.S. began practicing what became known as Euclidian Zoning.)

In 1976, after graduating from CWRU in 1973, and undertaking a two-year master’s program at Columbia University, Brown hoped that his first full-time city planning job would be working in the city of Cleveland for Norm Krumholz, who was nationally known for his pioneering work in “equity planning,” which focused on creating choices for residents who otherwise had few if any choices in life. After Krumholz told him that the city planning office was trying to avoid layoffs and had no jobs available, Brown took a job with Cuyahoga County’s planning commission, where he worked for nine years.

In 1985, Brown finally got his “dream job” when the Cleveland Planning Office, under Director Hunter Morrison and Mayor George Voinovich, hired him to manage the Civic Vision 2000 Citywide Plan, creating a plan and zoning for Cleveland’s neighborhoods. After the plan was completed, Brown became assistant planning director under Morrison and Mayor Michael R. White.

Brown served as Cleveland’s planning director 2006–2014, succeeding Chris Ronayne, and working under Mayor Jane Campbell, and continuing under Mayor Frank Jackson. He retired in 2014.

According to Brown, one of the most important skills of a planning director “is to treat everyone with respect regardless of the opinions they hold.” A Cleveland Plain Press article, describing Brown’s leadership of a contentious neighborhood meeting, stated that he “radiates honesty and sincerity, along with good humor.”