RANCHO SANTA FE — At the September Rancho Santa Fe Association monthly board meeting, the directors and members received an update from its consultant Stacey Pennington, who is also a Ranch resident. She described their community engagement process as being multifaceted including committee meetings, community roundtables, interviewing merchants and more.
According to Pennington, this interaction has engaged a variety of groups including Covenant members, retailers and merchants, nonprofits, hospitality as well as restaurant. And these groups have also interacted with each other.
Pennington shared that starting on September 2015 to March 2016, they championed the Village Vibe on the Village Green, which drew community members to pop-up events. Additionally, they partnered with the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe for seasonal happenings during the holiday season.
Although the bi-weekly gatherings were gaining momentum, they were forced to undergo a transition during the springtime. Pennington pointed out that the Village Green was only zoned to allow for six public events a year.
“Clearly, twice a month was exceeding that,” she said. “We were quickly able to regroup and actually, it happened to be a very wonderful transition for us because we were finding that as good as those events were on the green, they were still a little bit isolated from truly being integrated into this community.”
New integrations Pennington mentioned were the Garden Club Gathering at The Bistro and another gathering with The Country Friends. She shared how some residents that attended The Country Friends event hadn’t seen one another in years.
“Literally, there was one lady I met who has lived here since 1968. She saw a friend that she had not seen in 20 years just by coming out to that particular event,” she said.
The Celebrate Osuna event that took place in June was success. Pennington shared that the attendance was tremendous.
“It was really amazing to see everyone from young children to folks who have lived here for decades,” she said.
While the Vibe intends to help engage community involvement for Rancho Days, which kicks off Oct. 1, Pennington shared how they are also gearing up for a special RSF property Arroyo event slated for Nov. 19.
Before ending her update, Pennington noted that on the communications front the activity from its Downtown Village Facebook Page had being doing very well.
“It’s been tremendous to see how the various members of our community who have a Facebook presence,” she said.
To visit the Downtown Village Facebook Page for community updates log onto facebook.com/RanchoSantaFeVillage/.
