Chelsea Gondeck’s seventh-grade geography teacher told her, “You’re going to be the first female president of the United States.”
Although Gondeck, the new CEO of the Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs, doesn’t rule that out, for now, she is passionate about the city where she’s lived since high school.
“I felt I could make a significant impact at the local level,” she says.
Gondeck already has done that. She joined the Downtown Partnership in 2021 and progressed through several key leadership roles. As director of planning and mobility, she managed a portfolio of projects to improve Downtown’s built environment and public spaces, crafted strategies to increase mobility and connectivity, and interacted with a host of key partners throughout the region and state.
From January 2023 to June 2025, she served as executive director of the Greater Downtown Colorado Springs Business Improvement District, working with business owners and other stakeholders to make Downtown clean, welcoming, engaging and walkable, and to attract visitors and locals to the city center. She was named interim CEO in June 2025 while the organization conducted a nationwide CEO search after previous President and CEO Susan Edmondson resigned. The organization chose Gondeck as CEO from among 125 candidates. She stepped into the role officially on Jan. 1.
Gondeck was born in California, but her military family left there when she was a year old and moved around the country during her early school years. They landed in Colorado Springs when her Air Force dad was stationed at Peterson Air Force Base, as it was then named.
“When I was in high school, I knew I wanted to stay here,” she says.
Gondeck graduated from Doherty High School and went to the University of Colorado Colorado Springs to study psychology and political science. While in college, she interned at Sen. Michael Bennet’s office. After graduating summa cum laude with distinction in political science, she headed for the University of Colorado Denver to obtain a master’s in political science with an emphasis in politics and public policy.
“I wanted to go into state-level politics,” she says. She might have jumped onto the road to fulfilling that geography teacher’s prediction, but just after she left for graduate school, she was accepted into the Colorado Department of Local Affairs’ “Best and Brightest” internship program. It provides graduate students in political science the opportunity to work full-time with a local municipality while completing their studies. She was assigned to the Fort Morgan city manager’s office.
“I fell in love with municipal government,” she says. After obtaining her degree, she worked for more than two years as an economic development specialist for Fort Morgan, helping the city develop and implement its Economic Development Strategic Plan.
Gondeck knew she wanted to return to Colorado Springs, and her job with Fort Morgan gave her a broad understanding of how a city that owned and operated its utilities worked.
“I did some negotiating with my parents and came back to Colorado Springs without a job,” she says. In 2018, she took a job as assistant public manager for CliftonLarsonAllen, working with entities such as business improvement and metro districts. Three years later, she heard from a school friend that the Downtown Partnership had an opening for a director of planning and mobility. The position aligned with her experience, and she felt she had found the perfect place to be.
In her four years at Downtown Partnership, Gondeck has spearheaded several initiatives that have brought significant and visible benefits to Downtown Colorado Springs.
The one she is perhaps most proud of is AdAmAn Alley, “the biggest placemaking project the Downtown Partnership had ever worked on,” she says. “It’s the perfect coalescing of public-private partnerships, bringing all of the dynamics together.”
The $3 million project that transformed a block in the heart of Downtown celebrated the 100th anniversary of the AdAmAn Club, whose members hike to the summit of Pikes Peak each New Year’s Eve and set off a fireworks display at the stroke of midnight. Gondeck’s management of the project required coordinating the work of multiple city departments, contractors, artists and craftspeople, and Colorado Springs Utilities, which upgraded some of Downtown’s oldest infrastructure. AdAmAn Alley has won recognition including the Colorado Downtown Excellence Award for Best Place in a Large Community from Downtown Colorado Inc. and an Award of Excellence in Public Space Management and Operations from the International Downtown Association.
As she takes charge of the Downtown Partnership, the organization is in the midst of finalizing an update to the Experience Downtown plan.
“We’ve made significant, substantial progress from the 1990s to now,” she says. The new iteration, called Elevate Downtown, looks at the needs of Downtown 10–15 years into the future — “what we should be doing yesterday to be a place where people want to live and residents of the community want to spend their time.”
Gondeck says completing the plan is the major goal for her first year as CEO. That will require City Council approval, but also “aligning staff, boards and resources to make sure we meet the goals of the plan and making sure everybody has a sense of ownership in the plan and can see where they fit into the progress we’re intending to make.”
About 90% of the street-level businesses in Colorado Springs are locally owned, Gondeck says, and the Downtown Partnership exists to help them with everything from grants to improve their building façades and loans to pursue ownership of property to guidance on resolving small issues with the city. As an advocate for Downtown Partnership’s members, she is closely watching the challenges they face to see how the organization can assist.
“There are larger forces at play in the larger market right now,” she says. “At the local and state level, we’re making sure policies are built to allow our small businesses to prosper. We’re advocating for changes to remove barriers, expanding existing resources and creating new resources. If there’s an issue we’re seeing that we can help effectuate systemic change, we can be the consolidated voice to represent Downtown business.”