Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Head Meg Cheever Poised To Retire

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Meg Cheever moved to Pittsburgh from Boston in 1975 to work for a law firm. From there, she became general counsel for WQED, then publisher of Pittsburgh Magazine. While her job changed, one thing that never did was her concern for Schenley Park.

It wasn’t the only run-down city park. They all were. But it was the one near her home.

In 1996, she persuaded a few friends to stand with her as the Schenley Park Conservancy, which swiftly transformed into the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. Twenty-one years later, Ms. Cheever is into the final year of a job she created when she went home one day, six months after naming the little group, and told her husband George, “I think this will succeed if it has a full-time commitment. I’d like to quit my job and run it. And he said, ‘OK, honey.’ “

Ms. Cheever plans to step down next March as the group’s president and CEO.

Her full-time commitment has resulted since the late 1990s in almost $100 million in capital fundraising that restored, renovated and repaired entrances, trails, eroded hillsides, buildings, monuments, fountains, habitats, views, watersheds and the reputation of the city’s parks, starting with the four largest at the time and branching into projects in 22 today... Read the full article