When the Downtown Tempe Community’s search committee asked Pam Goronkin last year whether she was interested in becoming its full-time president and chief operating officer, she declined.
"I said that was the furthest thing from my mind; I didn’t see myself as qualified," she said. "I was still serving on the Tempe City Council and trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up."
But she read the job description, and that was it.
Goronkin, 59, started the job in October and essentially became the voice for the downtown Mill Avenue District, an eclectic area that combines late 19th-century brick buildings with an explosion of new -urban chic high- and mid-rise condos and offices along Tempe Town Lake.
Mill Avenue has been transitioning from an area whose residents were mostly struggling Arizona State University students to professionals buying condos for $500,000 and up. Downtown Tempe is growing up in more ways than one.
"We feel like we are the keepers of the vision for the Mill Avenue District," Goronkin said. "We take very seriously our role to make people understand what urban design is, what makes downtown work, what makes pedestrians walk, what makes shoppers shop, and all that adds to the vibrancy of the experience. People come to Mill Avenue for the experience."
She said the intent isn’t to replace the shops selling ASU souvenirs and tie-dyed shirts with the types of chain stores you would find at Kierland Commons. There will still be the popular Tempe Art Festivals, which are sponsored by the Downtown Tempe Community, twice a year.
A native of Phoenix, she has lived in Tempe for 38 years and has six adult children, including three stepchildren. For about nine years, Goronkin stayed home to raise her three children but was always active in civic, philanthropic or church affairs.
She went to work in 1979 for Motorola as a secretary and worked her way up through various administrative jobs until, by the time she took a buyout 14 years later, she was in charge of 90 people who provided support services to the engineers.
For about 10 years she took courses toward a college degree, and got a business administration degree from the University of Phoenix in the late 1980s while working at Motorola.
But civic duty called. She took the Tempe Chamber of Commerce’s leadership class in 1995 and the following year helped promote a transit tax that eventually led to the light rail system now being built.
She joined the city’s Design Review Board and a steering committee for the Tempe Center for the Arts. She helped guide the center’s architecture, including the dramatic tent-type roof.
All this service, though, did not make her a household name when she ran for City Council in 2002. She ran in a pack of nine candidates for three open seats, and two candidates were incumbents. And she won, thanks to door-to-door campaigning and carefully targeted mailings.
Betty Beard
The Arizona Republic
