Sramek Won't Drop $510M Lawsuit Against Solano County Ranchers

California Forever CEO Jan Sramek is getting plenty of feedback from his new neighbors at town halls he is hosting in Solano County to pitch the utopian city he wants to build in the eastern half of the county with backing from some of Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires.

Among the 150 ranchers and other local residents who showed up last week at the American Legion hall in Rio Vista were several Solano County land owners who asked Sramek to drop a $510M lawsuit he has filed against them.

California Forever has alleged that ranchers and farmers in the area colluded in an effort to raise land prices while Sramek and his friends, calling themselves Flannery Associates, was spending close to $900M over the past five years to purchase more than 50,000 acres in Solano County.

The lawsuit, filed against dozens of land owners who refused to sell their property to California Forever, says they conspired to raise land prices due to “endless greed.”

According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, Maryn Anderson, a 34-year-old teacher and sixth-generation Solano County resident whose rancher parents are named in the suit asked Sramek: “Will you commit to dropping the lawsuit against the local farmers who are not aligned with your vision, in a goodwill attempt to change the way you are interacting with our community?”

Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, responded by doubling down on his charge that those who refused to sell their land to California Forever engaged in a criminal conspiracy.

According to the report, this response was met from jeers from the crowd, including a guy in a tractor cap who shouted “good neighbors don’t sue their neighbors.”

In an October court filing, the defendants in the lawsuit claimed that Flannery Associates used “strong-arm” pressure tactics to bully land owners into selling their property to the secretive California Forever initiative.

The plan to build a new city on rural land sitting between San Francisco and Sacramento also has generated a national security inquiry into the potential impact on Travis Air Force Base, which sits on land adjacent to the acreage that California Forever has purchased. The inquiry also wants to know if there’s any foreign money behind the initiative.

A referendum on the November 2024 ballot in Solano County will ask county voters to decide whether they want to proceed with California Forever. Sramek has indicated that his group will release a formal plan for the “walkable city” project in January.