Linda Parke Gallagher · 2004 Honoree

Linda Parke Gallagher says that she has always had “a taste for the big city.” She grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania but made frequent trips to New York with her parents for shopping and shows, to Philadelphia for ballet and art museums and to Washington to visit cousins who lived in Chevy Chase and who, ironically, owned a business on Eighth Street Southeast. She chose George Washington University because it was urban (and co-ed). With the exception of three years in Manhattan, she has been in Washington ever since, living on Capitol Hill and relishing the life of this community.

One aspect of city life that Linda does not appreciate is street litter. She picks it up when she’s out walking her dog, has helped organize innumerable clean-ups and has for years struggled to keep the bus stop near her East Capitol Street home free from trash. Her abhorrence of litter, which was so much a part of Eighth Street, led to her involvement with the renovation and redevelopment of Eighth Street. Together with Margot Kelly, a long time activist for change on Eighth Street, Linda founded Barracks Row Main Street–an effort to develop a vision of what Eighth Street could be based on the concept of using historic assets to foster commercial development (a strategy developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Center.) As founding president of the Board, Linda has put in countless volunteer hours securing the funding for and developing the organization into a credible community-based economic revitalization force that is guiding an estimated $25 million to the historic corridor, actually the oldest in the Federal City. Eighth Street is now one of the first five official DC National Trust Main Streets which assures some funding and technical assistance for the revitalization effort for five years. Its transformation is obvious in the numerous new restaurants and shops (27 new businesses in the last five years), the remodeled parking pattern and cast iron Washington Globe street lamps, in the bicycle racks and new landscaping with environmentally friendly tree boxes and 77 new American elms. It is becoming, as Linda puts it with enthusiasm, “a street that fosters community” and her goal of having it litter free is becoming a reality.

Linda's professional life has always been about building public/private partnerships. She has been a writer and public relations manager with A T& T; was the convenor of and first Executive Director of the Alliance to Save Energy, now thec ountry’s primary public advocate for energy efficiency and renewable fuels; was a senior executive at Fannie Mae; and was executive director of the National Low Income Housing Preservation Commission and the Affordable Housing Preservation Center. For the last twenty years Linda has run her own management and development consulting business, Gallagher & Associates, handling, among other things, issues of land use, affordable housing and urban development. As a volunteer, in addition to her work as a Board member of the Capitol Hill Community Foundation and on Eighth Street, Linda has been on the steering committee of the South Washington Family Strengthening Collaborative, on the Board of the Shakespeare Theater and Chair of its Theater Guild, on the Board of the Restoration Society and on the Corporate Forum Board of the Folger Shakespeare Library. She was one of the founders of Beat 26 and graduated from the Citizens’ Police Academy which aimed at enhancing community empowerment policing. She's been a block captain, has organized block parties and, of course, street clean-ups.

Linda is married toPeter Gallagher, president and CEO of America's Promise, the Alliance for Youth, which he joined at the invitation of its founder, Colin Powell. It is an organization dedicated to working with communities nation-wide to enhance opportunities and conditions for children.