RANCHO SANTA FE – Belmont Village Senior Living is partnering with Greystar Real Estate Partners to build a community for older adults in Rancho Santa Fe that will have 185 apartments, including 15 free-standing cottages.
This is the second San Diego project that the Houston-based company will have built in San Diego in partnership with Greystar following the 2022 construction of a 17-story senior living apartment tower in La Jolla.
Belmont Village Rancho Santa Fe will be Belmont Village’s fourth community in San Diego County and the 17th built in California since 2002.
Construction is slated to start toward the end of the year and finish in two years.
The cost of the Rancho Santa Fe project was not disclosed.
Designed by HPI Architecture, based in Carmel Valley, the three-story Belmont Village Rancho Santa Fe is being built within the gated community of The Lakes Rancho Santa Fe, adjacent to The Crosby Club golf course.
“For a golfer, it’s a dream come true,” said Patricia Will, CEO and founder of Belmont Senior Living. “The building itself is built around courtyards that afford a very unique indoor/outdoor experience.”
The 15 cottages will ring the property.
Will described the project design as having “an Italianate, sort of Tuscan feel” to blend in with other structures in Rancho Santa Fe, “but contemporized with large spaces, high ceilings with a nod to today.”
“Not only will the project have very manicured and pretty gardens, but integrated into those gardens are what I would call a lot of play spaces where people can really take advantage of the climate and the outdoors,” Will said. “This is a place where it is really important for us to use the outdoors and the indoors almost interchangeably.”
‘Demand for Larger Apartments’
The apartments will range from about 500 square feet for a studio apartment to about 1,600 square feet for a cottage, Will said. Monthly rents haven’t been set.
“One of the things that we are seeing in the marketplace throughout the San Diego area, and in fact throughout California, is a demand for larger apartments,” Will said. “In a place like Rancho Santa Fe, we’re leaning into that.”
In a twist, Will, a Rancho Santa Fe resident, said that she plans to eventually move into the new center because the hillside home she owns is getting difficult to navigate.
“I’m on a ridgeline, which is very beautiful, but I’m realistic and I want to embrace my older age and still be able to enjoy everything that I enjoy there, but I may not be able to in my own house,” Will said.
Greystar Executive Director Jerry Brand also lives in Rancho Santa Fe.
“We are very excited about bringing what we know to our own neighborhood,” Will said.
Amenities at the Rancho Santa Fe project will include indoor and outdoor dining areas, a gym, private wine room, and outdoor pool, an art studio, movie theater, hair and nail salon, a sports lounge, shuffleboard, bocce courts, a putting green and poker tables.
Tenants will likely come from Del Mar Heights, Solana Beach, and Rancho Santa Fe, and some people from out of state, who are moving to San Diego County to join their adult children, Will said.
Men also make up a larger share of tenants than in the past.
“When I entered this business, 25, 27 years ago, the males represented maybe 5% to 7% of our head count,” Will said. “In our La Jolla building 40% of our occupants are men.”
Belmont Village Senior Living
FOUNDED: 1997
HEADQUARTERS: Houston
CEO: Patricia Will
BUSINESS: develops and operates senior housing
SAN DIEGO EMPLOYEES: 425
WEBSITE: www.belmontvillage.com
CONTACT: 713-467-1700
NOTABLE: Belmont Village Senior Living has more than 5,000 apartments in 35 locations in the U.S. and Mexico Cit