The project will now go through Solano County’s standard public approval process, which includes a full environmental impact report and a negotiated development agreement, said Mitch Mashburn, who chairs the county Board of Supervisors.
California Forever, the dreamily named mega-development, would be a new community built across 17,500 acres. The project is backed by some of the most eyebrow-raising names in Silicon Valley: Marc Andreessen, Patrick and John Collison, Chris Dixon, John Doerr, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Reid Hoffman and others. Between 40,000 and 160,000 homes and apartments would house 100,000 to 400,000 residents, while plans also include 25 million to 90 million square feet of nonresidential development.
“Delaying the vote gives everyone a chance to pause and work together, which is what is needed — not a fight between friends throughout the county on both sides of the issue,” Mashburn said in a statement. “With the ballot measure off the table, it will be far easier for county staff to work with California Forever. It also creates an opportunity to take a fresh look at the plan and incorporate input from more stakeholders.”
The decision by California Forever to withdraw the ballot measure followed a meeting between Mashburn and Jan Sramek, founder and CEO of California Forever. Although California Forever will now take a more conventional path toward public approval, it’s not dragging out the timeline. Sramek says they hope to have the environmental approval and the development agreement complete in 2025, with the full package coming back before the county in 2026.
“This creates opportunities to incorporate additional community input, and then provide everyone with access to objective analysis, and the full terms of the development agreement, including the community benefits,” Sramek said. “We believe that with this process, we can build a shared vision that passes with a decisive majority and creates broad consensus for the future.”
CONTROVERSIAL FROM THE START
Trying to win project approval at the ballot box “politicized the entire project,” Mashburn said. In his view, this approach would have undercut the county’s abilities to effectively evaluate the development against metrics including water consumption, traffic or density.
Almost from day one, the project had been controversial. It seemed to strike at larger themes heard across the nation related to urban design, sustainability and the idea of building a new city from the ground up. “It [makes] significant changes to the county’s general plan,” County Administrator Bill Emlen said at a June 25 Board of Supervisors meeting, noting that at full buildout of California Forever, the county’s population could be doubled.
The ballot measure, formally known as the East Solano Homes, Jobs and Clean Energy Initiative, spanned nearly 90 pages, offering a number of details and guarantees in its pitch for public support. There were assurances such as the “Solano Jobs Guarantee,” which tied job creation to home development, tamping down the idea that the project is just another housing development designed for wealthy outsiders and would ignore local needs. The initiative promised to invest $200 million into the downtown districts of local cities and create an added “security zone” around nearby Travis Air Force Base.
An investment company known as Flannery Associates LLC was established in Delaware and lists an address in a shopping center in Folsom, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office. Over the last several years, Flannery Associates has quietly been buying up thousands of acres of largely farm and ranch land in Solano County, fueling further speculation about just how significantly the largely rural county of fewer than 500,000 residents could be transformed by some of the state’s biggest investors.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
California Forever is planned for an unincorporated section of Solano County. It would not be a new charter city but would function largely as a real estate development. Because the development is planned for an incorporated area, voters must give it a go-ahead.
Conservation groups including the Solano Land Trust oppose the plan, arguing that “a development of this magnitude will have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland and natural environment.”
The Solano Land Trust instead supports the development of housing within the county’s cities, said Nicole Braddock, executive director of the organization. “A project that is the size of the East Solano Plan — which would add a population that is roughly similar to Vallejo, the county’s largest city — is unnecessary to address housing challenges in the county,” Braddock wrote in an email.
Residents including Duane Kromm, a member of the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, characterized the move by Flannery Associates as an attempt to drive up land values via rezoning, which the vote in November could have accomplished.
“If you take the 17,500 acres, and you jack up the density that they’re asking for to roughly 350,000 units, what would be the market value, just simply from the rezoning?” Kromm asked. “And it’s my assumption that that is where the money is to be made in this project. The rest of it is fluff. And they are looking to make a bundle of money from rezoning.”
Supporters of the plan say it represents a new approach to city design, focusing on developing a dense, walkable community, intermixed with employment centers, helping to reduce the number of long commutes that have plagued the Bay Area. It calls for renewable energy and the kinds of affordable housing needed for working families.
“The East Solano Plan is a bold plan to invest $30 billion into Solano County over the next 15 years, creating tens of thousands of new homes, and create tens of thousands of new jobs,” Sramek told the Board of Supervisors. “It is a path to achieve the California dream for tens of thousands of Solano residents.”
This article first appeared in Governing, a sister publication of Industry Insider — California.
