Jan Sramek, founder and chief executive officer of California Forever. — Bloomberg
LOS ANGELES: A group of Silicon Valley billionaires is pushing the pause button on their ambitious and controversial plans to build a new city northeast of San Francisco.
The company behind the effort, California Forever, will withdraw a measure on the November ballot that would have asked voters to approve major zoning changes in Solano County.
Instead, the project will be subject to an environmental review and development agreement over the next two years, the company and chair of the county’s Board of Supervisors said in a statement.
“Our view was why run a close-call election?” Jan Sramek, founder and chief executive officer of California Forever, said in an interview on Monday.
By bringing the measure back to voters in 2026, “we can build a much bigger tent, a bigger coalition and more time for people to review everything. And then we are hopefully passing this by a significant majority”.
While Sramek described the move as a “reordering of the steps that keeps the timeline the same”, the delay is a concession to opponents who argued California Forever was moving too fast in its rush to build.
Supporters envision a green, walkable city that would generate new jobs and much-needed housing.
But many local leaders, residents and farmers have criticised the plan and accused California Forever of using strong-arm tactics to compel landowners to sell.
“The people have spoken and California Forever has been forced to withdraw their hastily drawn, poorly designed initiative, given a surefire loss in November,” Solano Together, a coalition opposing the development, said in a statement.
During almost six years, California Forever, backed by tech titans such as former Sequoia Capital chairman Mike Moritz, social-impact investor Laurene Powell Jobs and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, has spent US$900mil to buy more than 62,000 acres of farmland for the new city.
The company said the project would build housing for 400,000 new residents and bring 15,000 jobs.
“While the need for more affordable housing and good-paying jobs has merit, the timing has been unrealistic,” said Mitch Mashburn, chairman of the Solano County Board of Supervisors.
The company’s initial strategy of using a ballot initiative to bypass an environmental review process was a “mistake” that “politicised the entire project,” he said.
“That made it difficult for us and our staff to work with them, and forced everyone in our community to take sides.”
Sramek vowed to forge ahead, and said that allowing time for environmental and permitting reviews would ultimately enable California Forever to “build something really incredible”.
A victory at the polls in 2026 would “create a mandate for the next 50 years that a close election would not”, he said.
He now faces the long task of building support among local critics from farmers to US Representative John Garamendi, a California Democrat who represents parts of Solano County.
“From the beginning, I have maintained that the proposed project was only a pipe dream, not a true plan,” Garamendi said in a statement. — Bloomberg
