Referendum on California Forever is Withdrawn

California Forever, the initiative to build a new city in Solano County backed by a bevy of Silicon Valley tech billionaires, has been put on hold.

In a joint announcement with the Solano County Board of Supervisors, California Forever said it is withdrawing a referendum on the November ballot on its utopian plan for a new city on rural land between San Francisco and Sacramento.

California Forever instead will submit an application for a general plan and zoning amendment, including a full environmental impact report, and negotiate a development agreement for the project with the county, postponing a referendum until 2026 at the earliest.

“Delaying the vote gives everyone a chance to pause and work together, which is what is needed-not a fight between friends throughout the County on both sides of the issue,” the announcement stated.

Solano Forever, a group that was formed to oppose the project, declared victory in a statement on Monday that said “the people have spoken and California Forever has been forced to withdraw their hastily drawn, poorly designed initiative, given a surefire loss in November.”

The “fight between friends” included a $510M lawsuit that California Forever—the dream of CEO Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader—filed against ranchers and farmers in Solano County, who refused to sell their land to the initiative.

Operating under the name Flannery Associates during a five-year land acquisition binge that began in 2017, Sramek and his financial backers including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs—spent $900M to acquire more than 50,000 acres of rural land in the eastern part of the county near Travis Air Force Base.

In the lawsuit, Sramek accused Solano County landowners, who refused to sell their property to California Forever, of conspiring to raise the price of the land due to “endless greed.” In a court filing in October, defendants in the lawsuit claimed that Flannery Associates used “strong-arm” pressure tactics to bully land owners into selling.

California Forever aimed to build a “walkable city” with up to 400,000 new residences. The plan, put forward earlier this year, promised to build affordable, medium-density housing, offered millions of dollars in community benefits, and down-payment assistance and scholarships.

Mitch Mashburn, chair of the Solano County Board of Supervisors, said Monday that the initiative’s effort to hold a referendum on the project without a full environmental impact report was a “mistake” that politicized the project and made it difficult to move forward, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

“We recognize now that it’s possible to reorder these steps without impacting our ambitious timeline,” Sramek said, in a statement.