Mayor Vows to Fight Billionaires Over New California City

Now that their cover has been blown, a group of Silicon Valley billionaires who have quietly bought at least 52,000 acres in Solano County during the past five years—that’s most of the eastern part of the county—have put up a website to explain the project.

It turns out that all the headline writers who have been throwing around the word “elitist” to describe this group—some of the richest technocrats on the planet—may have been jumping to conclusions.

To begin with, let’s correct the name of the company. That shadowy Delaware-based LLC called Flannery Associates that spent $800M buying more than 140 properties from more than 400 owners in Solano County since 2017?

Yes, that’s the parent company, but it turns out the parent has a parent. It’s called California Forever, which is the name of the website.

“To date, our company has been quiet about our activities. This has, understandably, created interest, concern and speculation. Now that we’re no longer limited by confidentiality, we are eager to begin a conversation about the future of Solano County—a conversation with all of you,” says the intro.

Why didn’t they start the conversation before they bought all that land, you ask?

“We knew that to build a complete, sustainable community, we would need to assemble a large holding. The only way to avoid creating a rush of reckless short-term land speculation was to not share our specific plans until we finished acquiring the properties. We are now excited to move on to the real work of building a thoughtful and consensus-minded plan for eastern Solano,” the website explains.

The California Forever site calls its financial backers—a bevy of tech-oriented venture capitalists including Marc Andreessen, Michael Moritz, Reed Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs—“passive investors” who are “not involved in day-to-day operations.”

The site indicates that the planned ultra-sustainable community is all about creating “good-paying local jobs” and new paths to homeownership. They don’t want to build a new city from scratch on rural land between San Francisco and Sacramento just for themselves.

The secret plan to build a new city is all about addressing the Bay Area’s housing shortage, meeting regional infrastructure needs and bringing jobs and economic growth to the county, according to the website.

“We are also interested in building trade schools and other educational paths that help Solano residents learn the skills they need to get these new jobs and build long-lasting careers,” the site says.

The mayor of Fairfield, one of the larger towns in sparsely populated Solano County—and the administrative seat of the county—isn’t forming a welcoming committee for the newly discovered largest land owner in the neighborhood.

According to a report in Bloomberg, Mayor Catherine Moy has been busy lining up opposition to the California Forever initiative.   

“This is no way to go about any kind of development,” Moy declared. “We’re going to do everything we can to stop this.”

John Carli, mayor of the other large town in Solano County, Vacaville, expressed concern that surrounding Travis Air Force Base with new residences in a new city may cause the Pentagon to rethink the viability of the base, with is the largest single employer in the county with a workforce of 26,000 people.

“The answer isn’t necessarily to just build a brand, new city without consideration for all the impacts that you’re creating,” Carli told Bloomberg.

California Forever is the brainchild of its CEO (he’s also the CEO of Flannery Associates), former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek.

“After moving to California a decade ago, Jan spent time in Solano County during fishing trips and fell in love with area,” the website explains.

“Having previously lived in many of the world’s most walkable, livable and sustainable towns and cities, Jan became interested in fusing what he’s learned about those livable communities with old plans for Solano County. He became committed to a vision for the future of Solano County.”

And, he has friends with $800M in passive cash burning a hole in their pocket.