Details emerge for billionaire-backed startup community plan northeast of San Francisco

2024-01-24T19:14:00-05:00

The once-secretive plan for a startup new community in Solano County, Northern California, is beginning to materialize as the company known as California Forever has begun publicizing details for their proposed development ahead of a potential November vote to determine its future.

Details made public with the start of a requisite petition drive showed a preliminary map, renderings, and area plan for the project, which would notably be the first large-scale demonstration of the "walkable city" concept designed entirely from scratch in North America.

Image courtesy California Forever

Billed as a future "amazing success story" by the company’s founder Jan Sramek, the development intends to construct some 20,000 new affordable residences plus a solar farm and network of public parks before 2040. The plan reportedly allows for further growth to support a population of up to 400,000. As the announcement post notes, much of the preliminary proposal is focused on creating missing middle ho...

Anti-democratic vistas: Plans for a new city in Northern Californian farmlands draw ire from concerned officials

2023-09-04T12:00:00-04:00

Over a five-year period, the company became the largest landowner in Solano County after purchasing more than 55,000 acres of undeveloped land. The company has paid more than $800 million since 2018, according to court records. [...] On the eastern end of Solano County, the city of Rio Vista is now surrounded by Flannery Associates land. Mayor Ronald Kott said that, like many Solano County officials, he had not been approached by anyone from the company to discuss plans for the land.

Similar to Marc Lore’s utopian vision for a new $400 billion Shenzhen-style city from scratch called Telosa, the secretive land grab-cum-startup city lies suspiciously close to Travis Air Force Base and is being marketed as a “new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space.”

Democratic Representative Mike Thompson told reporters last week he was “very concerned about our national security” related to the plan's proximity to the base. Some residents have reported “fear” in their dealing with the company, including concerns about retaliation. The company, meanwhile, maintains its secrecy is deliberate and intended to prevent possible real estate speculation on the part of landowners, a group of whom they have sued for collusion.

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Details emerge for billionaire-backed startup community plan northeast of San Francisco

Anti-democratic vistas: Plans for a new city in Northern Californian farmlands draw ire from concerned officials