On August 4, RSFA Board President Courtney LeBeau issued a message and FAQs regarding the Silvergate project. Protect Rancho Santa Fe has reviewed that messaging against the Protective Covenant, the Regulatory Code, and the Association’s own prior actions.
Our detailed response identifies several material inaccuracies and omissions, including:
• Memory care is prohibited. Protective Covenant Article I, Paragraph 1 contains an absolute ban on institutions for the care or restraint of the mentally impaired. Even Class K – the Covenant district specifically designated for hospitals and institutions – expressly reaffirms that same ban. Resolution 2025-102, which declared the project consistent with Class C through a “similarity” finding, never mentions or addresses the Paragraph 1 prohibition. As detailed in Protect Rancho Santa Fe’s July 21, 2026 Analysis (“Classification of Silvergate Memory Care Units as Prohibited Institutional Use”), memory care is specialized institutional supervision for residents with Alzheimer’s disease or other major neurocognitive disorders. These residents require continuous monitoring, wander-management protocols, secured perimeters, and special egress-control devices (expressly authorized by Health & Safety Code § 1569.699 precisely because ordinary residential environments cannot provide the necessary protective restraint). With Silvergate’s proposed 24 to 48 dedicated memory care suites far exceeding California’s six-resident “residential-use” safe harbor, the component falls squarely within Paragraph 1’s ban and outside the closed list of Class C uses.
• More than fifty of Silvergate’s apartment units fail the Association’s own size standard. Regulatory Code § 43.0301 requires a minimum of 1,750 square feet of enclosed living space. The plans show 52 units at only 1,440 square feet. In October 2024 the Art Jury itself correctly required a variance or redesign; that requirement later disappeared from the public record without a properly noticed variance.
• “Fair process” requires applying the rules that currently exist in our Governing Documents. When a proposed use conflicts with an absolute Covenant prohibition or a clear intensity minimum, the proper path is redesign or the formal Chapter 80 modification process with supermajority consent of affected owners. Neither has occurred.
Every substantive statement in our letter is footnoted to the specific governing-document provision, Art Jury minute, professional memorandum, or statute on which it rests. Those citations identify passages that the Board, the Art Jury, and Association staff have missed, misinterpreted, or simply chosen to ignore. There has been a great deal of misinformation surrounding this project. Protect Rancho Santa Fe is not its purveyor.
Click here to read the full letter and all supporting documents.
Protecting the character of Rancho Santa Fe is not obstruction. It is the reason the Protective Covenant exists.
On Behalf of the Protect Rancho Santa Fe Board of Directors,
Russ Penniman
Board President
