Rancho Santa Fe's Art Jury voted 5-0 on Aug. 25 to approve Phase 2 of the proposed Silvergate senior living community. The unanimous vote on landscape and lighting plans sends the 148-unit project into final review.

That is the last stage before the Art Jury can recommend approval to the full Rancho Santa Fe Association Board of Directors. If the board signs off, the project would then go to San Diego County for permitting.

Silvergate would sit on a long-vacant, nearly 29-acre lot on Calzada del Bosque, off Via de la Valle. Solana Beach-based AmeriCare Health and Retirement purchased the land in 2021, The Coast News reported. The project calls for 94 apartments, 30 cottages and 24 memory care units, along with a restaurant, clubhouse, spa, pool, gardens, pickleball courts and trails. All 148 units would be rentals.

If built, it would be the first residential retirement community in Rancho Santa Fe, according to The Coast News.

Greg Petree, AmeriCare's president and chief operating officer, called the vote "an important milestone" in a Sept. 1 San Diego Union-Tribune report. He said the project reflects what local seniors want: the choice to remain in the community as they age.

Over roughly two years and about nine Art Jury meetings, developers reduced the number of cottages from 44 to 30, added architectural details, redesigned interior roadways and planted more than 400 new trees for perimeter screening. The Art Jury approved the project's bulk and mass in March 2026, clearing Phase 1. That approval came only after 6 acres outside the Rancho Santa Fe Protective Covenant were removed because of jurisdictional questions.

The Aug. 25 vote also restored a two-story memory care building. Developers had presented a single-story version in March, but the Art Jury moved to put the second story back after reductions to overall bulk and mass.

The project still needs a variance. Association Regulatory Code requires living space in each unit of a multifamily building to be at least 1,750 square feet. In a letter to the Association cited by the Union-Tribune, Protect Rancho Santa Fe president Russ Penniman wrote that 52 of Silvergate's apartments would be 1,440 square feet and its 24 memory care units just 375 square feet.

Association Building Commissioner Joel Levanetz said a notice of the variance hearing will be mailed to all Covenant property owners within 500 feet of the property. He said the Art Jury could review the plans again in the coming months and either recommend approval to the Association Board or keep the project in final review if concerns remain.

The community group Protect Rancho Santa Fe held a standing-room-only town hall at the Secret Garden on Aug. 27, two days after the vote. Penniman said more than 120 people attended. The group has called Silvergate "the largest commercial development ever considered within the Covenant" and raised concerns about density, rural character and traffic on Via de la Valle.

"If approved as is, 5% of the population of Rancho Santa Fe would live on less than half of 1% of Rancho Santa Fe land," Penniman told the Union-Tribune in its Sept. 1 report.

The project has not been officially submitted to San Diego County. The major use permit process will include California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review and studies of traffic, noise, hydrology and water quality. Over the summer, Silvergate introduced the project to the San Dieguito Planning Group, the local body it will work with during county review.

No date has been set for the Art Jury's next review of the project.