Billionaire advocates of a new city that would rise from the rolling prairie northeast of San Francisco Bay cleared their first major hurdle Tuesday, when the Solano County Registrar of Voters certified that the group had enough signatures to submit their proposal to local voters in November.
The group backing the measure, called California Forever, must now convince voters to support the bold idea of erecting a walkable, environmentally friendly community with tens of thousands of homes, along with a sports center, parks, lanes for bicycles, open spaces and a giant solar farm on what is now grassland.
Led by entrepreneur Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, the company is backed by a glittering roster of tech titans, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; venture capitalist Marc Andreessen; and Patrick and John Collison, who founded the payment processing company Stripe.
In an interview Tuesday, Sramek said the question before Solano County voters is nothing less than “a referendum on what we want the future of California to be.”
The state, he said, was once a great place “that built all these incredible things, bridges, water infrastructure, big public works, and now it's this oasis for the rich, or the people who bought houses when they were cheap and got to live here.” ”.
Amid a critical lack of affordable housing, he said, his proposed new city offers a way out “of this defeatist mode of building nothing, arguing about everything.”
But the proposal faces opposition from some local leaders, along with environmental groups concerned about the loss of natural habitat. Opponents of the project said a recent survey they conducted found that 70% of people surveyed were skeptical.
“There is a litany of reasons” to oppose the project, said former Solano County Supervisor Duane Kromm, who has pushed for growth limits in the county and heads the group that funded the survey. Among the reasons, he said, are the county's long-term commitment to keeping development confined to existing cities, along with what he said is a lack of transparency on the part of the project's proponents.
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) even went so far as to publish a opinion article against the project in the local newspaper, writing: “I strongly support efforts to increase the number of good-paying jobs, implement clean energy and provide opportunities for our region. But these efforts require strong public policies that work for our community, not lavish promises that may never be fulfilled.”
Part of the opposition stems from California Forever's rocky introduction to the local political scene: The effort, launched under a cloak of secrecy, became mired in controversy last year amid unfounded speculation that the land buyers were foreign agents. with espionage intentions.
That's because for years, before proponents revealed their plans, they used a limited liability company called Flannery Associates to buy land from farmers in a vast swath of the county, stretching from Rio Vista in the river delta Sacramento-San Joaquin 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, led some people, including government officials, to speculate that they could be part of an effort by foreign spies to obtain military secrets.
Last year, it was revealed instead as a bold plan to build a new city from the ground up and reinvent the way homes are built in California.
In January, Sramek unveiled plans for the new community and announced that his group would begin a signature-gathering campaign to present to county voters a measure to amend zoning regulations. Her group spent $2 million on those efforts from January to March. The group also began presenting a list of benefits voters could expect from the new community.
Among them: the commitment to create at least 15,000 jobs; $500 million to help with down payments on housing, scholarships and other benefits for residents; $200 million to revitalize downtown Solano County communities such as Rio Vista, Benicia and Dixon; and commitments to preserve open space, create walkable neighborhoods, and improve traffic flow on nearby roads.
On May 12, California Forever announced it was in talks with 12 employers interested in expanding to the county. On May 21, the group said it had awarded $500,000 in grants to local organizations. And on June 4, the group promised to build a regional youth sports complex so kids wouldn't have to travel as often to San Francisco or Sacramento to play club sports.
Sramek moved with his family and their golden retriever to the Solano County town of Fairfield. He said Tuesday that he feels welcome in his new community and stated that he loved the heat, even on a day when the temperature topped 100 degrees.
He said he believes voters can be persuaded that his project could help solve the state's housing crisis and improve the county's economic situation. People have been “disappointed in developers before,” she said. But he said his group takes “very seriously” about fulfilling his promises.
Some elected officials say they are listening.
Ron Kott, mayor of Rio Vista, a city of about 10,000 adjacent to the property California Forever wants to develop, said he sees “a lot of advantages.” Among them, he said, it could improve his city's retail landscape and possibly bring in a much-needed health care clinic.
“I need more business,” he said. “I need more sales tax revenue. “I need essential services.”
