Billionaire-backed developer asks voters to approve new California city

A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader leading the charge to build a new California city is starting to fill in the details around the secretive project as he and a campaign team funded by his Silicon Valley investors prepare to take their case to the voters. 

The development in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco, would start with 50,000 residents in a first phase near Rio Vista, Jan Sramek, founder and CEO of California Forever, said in an interview. Business opportunities would arise in housing and mixed-use construction, renewable energy, farming and conservation. 

To keep a lid on costs and limit water and energy use, the community would consist largely of three-story townhouses, apartments and auxiliary dwelling units and not freestanding, suburban-style homes. And California Forever, which conceived the project, plans to provide $400 million in down-payment assistance to county residents, construction workers and employees of nearby Travis Air Force Base. 

With backers including former Sequoia Capital Chairman Michael Moritz and social-impact investor Laurene Powell Jobs, Sramek and his team say they’re on a mission to ease California’s housing crisis and restore the era of walkable downtowns that was lost to the rise of suburbs and American car culture. But the plan has sparked fierce opposition from residents, farmers and politicians, who accuse the developer of using shady tactics and suing those who stand in the way.

“You’ve managed to absolutely poison the politics of the county in which you are going to rely on voters,” said U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat whose district includes the Air Force base, now flanked by California Forever’s acreage. “Good luck with that.”

On Wednesday, Sramek will introduce a ballot measure asking Solano County residents to approve changes to zoning regulations from the 1980s that limit development outside of existing cities. If the measure qualifies for the ballot and passes in November, Sramek and his supporters say, it will help California realize the interconnected goals of adding affordable and climate-friendly housing. 

The company also plans to invest $200 million in the downtowns of other cities in the county, plus $70 million for scholarships and small-business grants and $30 million for parks and green spaces. 

In the long term, they say, a full build-out of the project in the semirural region between the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento may take 50 years. The still-unnamed municipality could eventually house 400,000 people in compact neighborhoods powered by solar and wind farms. Food will be produced locally in greenhouses and through vertical farming. Nearby retail, office and manufacturing space will provide jobs for residents within walking distance of their homes.

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The ballot measure advances an effort that has been years in the making. Since 2017, Sramek and his investors — who also include Marc Andreessen and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — have spent $900 million to buy 62,000 acres, according to Solano County records. Sramek pieced together dozens of parcels, conducting the transactions through an entity called Flannery Associates LLC to conceal his identity. 

The secrecy was needed to avoid a rush of land speculation, his team has said. Yet as word spread of a mystery buyer snapping up farmland, prices began to soar. 

In May 2023, Flannery Associates sued several local landowners for more than $500 million, alleging they conspired “to unfairly raise prices and extract hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profits.” Flannery, a subsidiary of California Forever, has since settled with some of the owners. A federal judge in Sacramento is considering a request by the other defendants to dismiss the case.

The hardball tactics enraged some local officials. The bad blood was on display as recently as last week, when Sramek and his development team went to Washington to brief members of Congress on the project and assure them that it wouldn’t interfere with the Air Force base’s security perimeter. 

Garamendi, whose family has owned a ranch in the area since 1863, told Sramek that his refusal to drop the lawsuit against the farmers was “despicable” and walked out of the meeting, said two people who were present.

In an interview, Sramek said California Forever was seeking an “amicable outcome” to its lawsuit. When asked whether he would drop the litigation to improve the political odds of voters approving the new city in a referendum, he said no.

Hard feelings aren’t the only obstacle facing California Forever. Even if Solano County voters approve a land-use change, the developers still face a complex, protracted process before they can start building. Completing environmental impact reviews, securing water rights and building transportation and other infrastructure could derail the project. 

Two other ambitious projects underscore the challenge. It has taken since 1997, when development was proposed on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, for the first residents to be able to move in — a milestone expected this year. For the developers of the Newhall Ranch north of Los Angeles, it took almost three decades — until 2017 — to get approval of tract maps and move forward. 

“We can all agree that more housing is needed,” said Sadie Wilson, a land use planner with the Greenbelt Alliance, part of a coalition of nonprofit groups in the region opposing California Forever’s plan. “It’s not the what, it’s the how. Why don’t they put their billions into building housing in existing communities that already have infrastructure, instead of developing open space?”

Sramek said he and his investors have a long time horizon. 

“In terms of the timeline, it’s in the name," he said. "I’m not kidding when I say that many of the investors would like to hold this forever. We don’t have a defined horizon. I hope one day I am retiring from building it.”