Tech billionaires backing a proposal to build an entirely new city on the rolling prairie northeast of San Francisco Bay have agreed to remove their measure from the November ballot and will first fund a full environmental assessment of the project, officials said Monday.
The break — announced in a joint declaration from a Solano County supervisor and chief executive of California Forever, the group supporting the development, marks a sea change in what had been a relentless push to build a city from the ground up in rural Solano County. Until recently, California Forever, whose roster includes tech giants such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, seemed determined to take the proposal directly to local voters this fall.
In June, after the group spent millions of dollars on a signature-gathering campaign, the county recorder announced the the measure had qualified for the November election, despite the opposition of many local elected officials. At the time, Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader leading the effort, said the measure was nothing less than “a referendum on what we want the future of California to be.” .
Jan Sramek, chief executive of California Forever, stressed that his investment group remains committed to the project.
(Janie Har/Associated Press)
Then, Monday morning, an about-face: California Forever announced that it would withdraw the measure. Instead, the group will follow the county’s normal process for zoning changes for the nearly 18,000-acre swath of land proposed for development. This includes funding a comprehensive environmental impact study and reimbursing the county for staff and consultant time related to the undertaking, according to the joint statement released by Sramek and Mitch Mashburn, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors from Solano.
Although “the need for more affordable housing and good-paying jobs is justified, the timing is not realistic,” Mashburn said in the release. Rushing California Forever to the polls without an environmental assessment and a negotiated development agreement “was a mistake,” he added. “It politicized the entire project, made it difficult for us and our staff to work with them, and forced everyone in our community to take sides.” »
In his part of the statement, Sramek, chief executive of California Forever, emphasized that his investment group remains committed to the project and feels the urgency to make it happen. “For every year of delay, thousands of Solano parents miss more matinees, recitals and bedtime stories because they commute two hours to work. They can’t get those magical moments back.
“We want to show that it’s possible to go faster in California,” Sramek said. “But we now recognize that it is possible to reorganize these steps without affecting our ambitious timetable.”
He said his group will work with the county to complete an environmental assessment and development agreement over the next two years, then bring the project to local voters for approval in 2026.
In an interview with the Times, Sramek said the decision to withdraw the ballot measure was made after it became clear that Solano County residents wanted a thorough environmental review process. He said he was confident the decision to “reverse the order of steps” — placing the environmental review and development agreement before putting the issue to voters — would lead to a better outcome.
Supporters of the project used an LLC to buy land from farmers across a vast swath of the county, stretching from Rio Vista (pictured) west, without telling anyone why.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)
“It won’t affect the schedule,” he said. “In fact, it might speed it up.”
The change also gives California Forever time to reset with local residents after the group’s rocky introduction to Solano County politics.
The effort, launched under cover of secrecy, became caught in controversy last year, amid unfounded speculation that the land buyers were foreign agents intent on espionage.
Indeed, for years before developers revealed their plans, they used a limited liability company called Flannery Associates to buy land from farmers across a vast swath of the county, stretching from Rio Vista to west to Travis Air Force Base, without telling anyone why. News of the mysterious land sales, in an area so close to a crucial military installation, has led some people to speculate that it could be part of an attempt by foreign spies to obtain military secrets.
Last year it was revealed instead as a bold plan to build a model city from the ground up and reinvent the way housing is built in California.
In January, Sramek unveiled plans for the new community that call for tens of thousands of homes surrounded by open space and trails. California Forever highlighted the community’s proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area, promising that the project would convert unused farmland into “middle-class neighborhoods with homes we can afford.” The city would be walkable, socio-economically integrated and powered by clean energy.
But the proposal has drawn fierce opposition from some local leaders, concerned that the group will shut down the planning process, as well as environmental groups concerned about the loss of natural habitat.
Mashburn said his deal with Sramek came after difficult conversations about how the process has gone so far.
“We talked about Solano County, the initiative, the future, how things were going to look, the processes we needed to follow, and whether we wanted to do this at the amicable and having a county where neighbors weren’t fighting among neighbors,” Mashburn said.
In an aerial photo, cattle graze near wind farms in rural Solano County.
(Terry Chea/Associated Press)
“It’s to his credit and their credit that they’re OK with that.” It’s not an easy thing for a leader to do to admit that you may have been wrong about something.
The decision to withdraw the ballot measure came a day before the Board of Supervisors discussed a consultant’s reportmandated by the county, on the potential fiscal impacts of the development and to vote on whether to bring the initiative to voters in November.
The report, prepared by Stantec Consulting Services in Walnut Creek, questioned the financial viability of the proposed new city and predicted construction challenges that could result in large deficits for the county. He estimates the cost of building schools, roads, sewer systems and other infrastructure to support the new community to be tens of billions of dollars.
In announcing the new timeline, Mashburn issued a challenge to California Forever’s investors, calling on them to show how they would provide water, solve transportation problems and navigate “the financial engineering that funds billions of dollars infrastructure” without increasing taxes.
Asked if he thought Sramek and his supporters would end up building the city of their dreams in his county, Mashburn said he was skeptical it would happen as the tech titans envisioned it.
“We’re starting from scratch,” he said. “There are incredible obstacles to overcome.”
