MUPP Alum, Mari Gallagher, to Receive UIAA City Partner Award

Mari Gallagher MUPP '00, will be the seventh CUPPA alumnus to receive the University of Illinois Alumni Association's UIC City Partner Award. The City Partner Award was created in 1993 to recognize UIC alumni who have contributed to the vitality of the Chicago Metropolitan area in special ways.

Gallagher is principal of Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group. She has developed transit-oriented developments, large and small commercial centers, and award winning affordable and energy efficient rental housing. As a researcher, she led and managed a variety of complex projects focused on diverse content areas from financial services to sprawl and community planning. Specialties include “below the radar” data, indexes, neighborhood report cards, and market analyses for undervalued and high-transition markets. She was one of the first researchers to identify and study the ITIN mortgage market.

Mari received substantial media coverage of her projects including those related to the pioneering concept of food deserts. In 2006, her firm released "Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in Chicago." The report was one of the first to statistically demonstrate a significant relationship between the location of grocery stores and food access with diseases related to diet. Recent food desert work has been covered regularly in media venues such as CNN, National Public Radio, Salon.com, the Economist, the Chicago Tribune, and many others.

Gallagher joins an outstanding group of CUPPA alumni who have previously received the City Partner Award including Lauri Alpern MUPP '86, principal at Open Door Advisors, Peter Skosey MUPP '93, vice president external relations at Metropolitan Planning Council, Patrick Magoon MUPP '79, president and chief executive office at Children's Memorial Medical Center, Jim Lemonides MUPP '77, chief executive officer at the Greater Northwest Chicago Development Corporation, Erma Tranter MUPP '78, president of Friends of the Parks, and Maria Ayala MUPP '86, associate director for operations at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at UIC.

This year's City Partner award will be presented to Gallagher at the UIAA Alumni Five ceremony on October 23 in Chicago. For more information on the UIAA UIC City Partner Award and the Alumni Five celebration, please see http://www.uiaa.org/chicago/awards/alumni_five.html.