Billionaires build a new City - Flannery Associates parent company launches website "California Forever"
Starting a new private city is a complex and ambitious undertaking that requires careful planning, significant resources, and adherence to legal and regulatory frameworks. While the exact requirements can vary depending on the location and specific goals of the private city, here are some general considerations and resources you would need:
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Financial Resources: Establishing a new city requires substantial financial backing. You'll need to acquire land, develop infrastructure, provide essential services, and cover ongoing operational costs. The amount of capital required will depend on the size and scope of the city.
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Land: Acquiring suitable land is a fundamental requirement. You must consider factors such as location, size, zoning regulations, and land use permissions. Additionally, you may need to negotiate with landowners or governments for land acquisition.
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Legal Expertise: Private cities often involve complex legal structures and negotiations with local, state, or national governments. Legal experts, including lawyers and consultants, will be crucial to navigate regulatory hurdles, property rights, and other legal matters.
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Urban Planning and Architecture: Engaging urban planners and architects is essential to design the city layout, infrastructure, and buildings in a way that aligns with your vision and complies with local regulations.
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Infrastructure Development: Private cities need infrastructure for utilities (water, electricity, sewage), roads, transportation systems, and public facilities. You'll need to invest in the construction and maintenance of these vital elements.
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Utilities and Services: To attract residents and businesses, you must provide essential services like healthcare, education, security, and public amenities. Setting up and maintaining these services will require additional resources.
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Governance Structure: Decide on the city's governance model, which could range from a proprietary government to a more traditional municipal structure. Develop the necessary administrative infrastructure and systems.
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Community Engagement: Building a community requires marketing, outreach, and engagement efforts. You'll need resources for advertising, public relations, and community-building activities.
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Compliance and Regulations: Ensure that you adhere to all local, state, and national laws and regulations. This might involve ongoing compliance costs and legal expenses.
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Funding Sources: Beyond initial capital, you need sustainable revenue sources to maintain and grow the city. These could include taxes, fees, investments, or other income streams.
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Security and Safety: Implement security measures to protect residents and assets. This might involve private security services, surveillance systems, and emergency response protocols.
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Environmental Considerations: Address environmental concerns, including sustainable development practices, waste management, and green energy solutions.
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Technology Infrastructure: Invest in robust IT infrastructure, including telecommunications and internet connectivity, to support the digital needs of residents and businesses.
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Education and Research: Establish educational institutions and research centers to foster innovation and attract a skilled workforce.
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Long-term Vision and Sustainability: Develop a clear, long-term vision for the city's growth and sustainability. Continuously monitor and adapt to changing circumstances.
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Risk Management: Plan for contingencies and potential risks, such as economic downturns, natural disasters, or political challenges.
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Partnerships and Alliances: Seek partnerships with local and regional entities, businesses, and organizations to bolster the city's growth and influence.
It's crucial to conduct thorough feasibility studies, consult with
experts, and secure the necessary permits and approvals before embarking
on such a project. Starting a new private city is a massive undertaking
that requires careful planning, substantial resources, and a commitment
to long-term success. Additionally, consider seeking legal and
financial advice to navigate the complexities of such an endeavor. It looks to me that "California Forever" is still working on step 2.
Flannery Associates parent company launches website – The Vacaville Reporter
Solano County residents have long been having conversations about what Flannery Associates, an LLC that purchased 52,000 acres in the county, might be up to. On Aug. 31, the company announced on a new website it is ready to start its own conversation.
“Now that we’re no longer limited by confidentiality, we are eager to begin a conversation about the future of Solano County,” the website reads. “A conversation with all of you.”
California Forever, which describes itself as the parent company of Flannery Associates, launched a website of the same name giving visitors a clearer look at their plans for the future of the southeastern corner of Solano County: A utopic, green city space with affordable housing, walkable neighborhoods, overhauled infrastructure — all while still protecting Travis Air Force Base and the area’s agricultural interests.
The site is complete with artistic renderings of rows of townhomes with children on bicycles, rolling hills where solar panels are being installed, and brightly colored, Mediterranean-style homes along the coastline.
And along with his company, the site notes that California Forever CEO Jan Sramek has moved to Solano County, purchasing a home with his wife, Naytri.
“They are excited to live here with their toddler daughter, her soon-to-arrive little brother, and golden retriever Bruce,” the website reads.
The company intends to staff offices in Vacaville, Fairfield and Vallejo at locations they will announce when they open. The site also offers a space for visitors to sign up for updates and express interest in living or working in the community.
The site describes operating under the name of Flannery Associates as “stealth mode”, and said it did so to avoid “a rush of reckless short-term land speculation.”
“We are now excited to move on to the real work of building a thoughtful and consensus-minded plan for eastern Solano,”
The plans point out that the project will have to go in front of Solano County voters under the county’s Orderly Growth Measure.
“We believe the Orderly Growth Measure, most recently reaffirmed by Solano voters in 2008, is the right approach to safeguard Solano County, including our project, from sprawl and disorderly growth for many years to come,”
If approved, the project will include new fire protection services, the website notes, and will require upgrades to the water drawn from the North Bay Aqueduct. The website commits to those upgrades but does not detail the extent the company proposes or how this might work in practice.
“We cannot, of course, solve a multi-county drinking water supply problem on our own,” the site reads, but we want to be part of a larger solution to bring clean and reliable water to existing cities as well as our project.”
The group also believes they can help improve existing roadways in the county, and pledges to grow no closer to Travis Air Force base than existing developments. The site also claims that the company donated the right of way to Travis AFB for a new water pipe put in in 2021.
But some local experts remain unconvinced. Osha Meserve, a Sacramento-based land use and water attorney, said the project has her concerned about environmental impacts to the water systems of the entire region. After years of speculation on what the company might be up to, she said, the sheer scale of the project has her concerned.
“I don’t think any of us understood the extent of it,” Meserve said,
As far as what it could mean for the area, Meserve has serious worries about the impacts on water access and agricultural use.
“From a land use and planning perspective, I just can’t imagine a worse idea,” she said.
Companies need to plan for orderly development, she said, and leapfrogging existing structures and processes is prohibited by local and state regulations.
But the resilience of that current regulation is likely to be tested in the near future, Meserve said, as she has heard the company has already employed a full team of special interest representatives working in the capital. With an initiative and considerable investment on the state level, she said, existing regulations could change.
“They’ve definitely come out of the shadows now,” she said.
The area in question poses a near-unlimited list of concerns, she said, and it would be wrong of the company to assume that they will be able to secure an adequate water supply for their plans.
Meserve said her other big concern is how this development will diminish and undermine the agricultural interests in the area. Many farmers and ranchers in the area may already have left, she said, and even if some are currently leasing back their land to continue farming after they’ve sold, they likely are no longer putting money into their operations, making them less viable long term.
Regardless of any new development, she said, rezoning the land from agricultural to residential could be a major blow to local agriculture.
“Even if the new city never is built, I think already we will see very negative impacts to agricultural productivity and longevity in the county”
Because the area is largely comprised of small family farms, she said, she hopes that the company will make decisions that lessen the impact to them and to productive agriculture in the county on a short-term level, at least.
“It’s very threatening to a whole way of life and a whole region,” she said, “and it doesn’t seem to be driven by any grounding in protecting existing local communities or the environment.”
Fairfield Mayor Cathrine Moy said she met with multiple county supervisors and U.S. Rep. John Garamendi on Friday to discuss new developments on the issue. Garamendi, according to Moy, remains concerned that the community is still not getting the full truth from the company.
That group, which gathered today, will be moving forward as a team to protect the community, she said, particularly the interests of the Air Force Base.
“We’re keeping our nose to the grindstone,” she said, “we’re moving forward.”
Moy said she has been contacted by the company and plans to meet with them soon. She said she would let them know she thinks they have erred in their investment.
Vacaville Mayor John Carli said he thinks the new information is interesting, but for now, he remains fairly skeptical of the proposal, which he sees more as a vision than a clear path forward.
“I can already see that it is a race to garner public opinion,” he said, “and I still have not seen a drawing other than a rendering of people walking through parks.”
And while the artistic renderings and exciting ideas on the website might catch the eye, Carli said he’s still waiting to see more concrete plans and solutions to problems raised,
“How do you create a city from scratch?” the mayor asked.
Carli doesn’t deny that a project like this one could have real positives for Vacaville, but he has to balance the resources needed and the potential setbacks to the county. And the things that the site claims it will be able to provide— water, public works, and safety— don’t just appear overnight without an existing structure.
“Safety is not something that you can simply just suggest,” Carli said. “It’s about how people are united together.”
Some locals have reached out to the mayor to ascertain what is going on with the company, but Carli can only offer as much information as he has himself.
“They’re questioning what is this all about, and there’s a lot of questions and no real concrete answers.”
On the question of water, Carli said, it’s difficult to reconcile the contrast between the promise of investment and partnership without the existence of a concrete plan or an amount the group is willing to spend.
“Something as large as what they would be proposing would require a complete rework and redesign of how Northern California distributes its water and transports it,” he said,
Carli said he has seen claims the development could include up to one million new trees, but the water required for those trees alone will be a profound drain on existing resources.
“It begs the question how much water are you going to consume?'” he said.
Additionally, Carli said, the new development will have to build low-income housing and do a full analysis of the environmental impact. All that takes two critical things: Time and money.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible,” he said, “but what I am suggesting is that this is not a project that happens overnight or even in 10 years,”
But Flannery has put themselves behind the eight ball with the community by not being transparent previously, Carli said, and they’ll need to work hard to regain the community’s confidence.
“Trust is proven,” he said, and so far they’ve done nothing at the local level to demonstrate their willingness to prove it.”
And if they do gain that trust and the approvals and permitting that could come with it, he said, they’ll have to do the hard work of making their ideas about the development a reality. Carli knows better than most what a tricky business that can be.
“What’s not painted in this brochure is that houses and fields burn,” Carli said, “people do commit crimes, water is a struggle.”
From the "California Forever" website
Starting a conversation about eastern Solano County
A chance for a new community, good paying local jobs,
solar farms, and open space
Let’s dust off those plans,
and breathe new life into them.
Next, a conversation
The Regional Plan 1970-1990 was the first comprehensive regional plan for the San Francisco Bay Area. It was developed by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and published in 1970.
The plan outlined a number of goals for the Bay Area, including:
- Protecting the region's natural resources, such as its open space and water supply.
- Managing growth in a way that minimizes traffic congestion and environmental impacts.
- Promoting economic development and job growth.
- Providing affordable housing for all residents.
- Improving public transportation.
The plan also established a number of specific policies to achieve these goals, such as:
- Designating certain areas as open space preserves.
- Creating a regional transportation network that includes both highways and public transit.
- Providing incentives for developers to build affordable housing.
- Investing in research and development to create new jobs.
The Regional Plan 1970-1990 was a landmark document that helped to shape the development of the Bay Area for decades to come. It is still cited today as a model for regional planning.
Here are some of the key elements of the plan:
- The plan called for a balanced regional growth strategy that would protect open space, reduce traffic congestion, and promote economic development.
- The plan established a number of growth boundaries that would limit development in sensitive areas.
- The plan called for a major expansion of public transportation, including light rail and bus rapid transit.
- The plan also called for increased investment in affordable housing.
The Regional Plan 1970-1990 was not without its critics. Some argued that it was too restrictive and would stifle economic growth. Others argued that it did not go far enough to protect open space and the environment.
Despite the criticism, the Regional Plan 1970-1990 had a significant impact on the development of the Bay Area. It helped to guide the growth of the region in a more sustainable and equitable way.
It is not clear why they would refer to the 1970 plan as gathering dust, and being taken off the shelf. The plan has been
updated several times since it was first published. The latest update,
Plan Bay Area 2040, was adopted in 2013. Plan Bay Area 2040 builds on
the goals and principles of the Regional Plan 1970-1990 and sets out a
vision for the Bay Area's future.
Final Plan Bay Area 2050 (2021)
After nearly four years of technical analysis and deep engagement with Bay Area residents and partners, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) jointly adopted Plan Bay Area 2050 in October 2021.
On October 21, 2021, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Executive Board of the Association of Bay Area Governments jointly adopted Plan Bay Area 2050 and its related supplemental reports. The momentous milestone makes Plan Bay Area 2050 the official regional long-range plan, charting a course for a Bay Area that is affordable, connected, diverse, healthy and vibrant for all residents through 2050 and beyond.
Plan Bay Area 2050 connects the elements of housing, the economy, transportation and the environment through 35 strategies that will make the Bay Area more equitable for all residents and more resilient in the face of unexpected challenges. In the short-term, the plan’s Implementation Plan identifies more than 80 specific actions for MTC, ABAG and partner organizations to take over the next five years to make headway on each of the 35 strategies. See the executive summary and geographical plan map.
PLANNING THE BAY AREA’S FUTURE WITH POST-IT NOTES
The bay area is a center for high tech workers with urban planning capabilities, and is made up of many cities and unincorporated areas. Not everyone was happy with this plan. Plan Bay Area 2050 is a long-range plan charting the course for the future of the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. This 30-year plan is authored by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) – none of whose members are directly elected by the eight million residents of the 101 cities. Yet these political appointees will make major decisions about the future of the city and its population in four critical areas:
- Transportation
- Housing
- Environment
- Economy
Confidence is low that the MTC – an organization known for scheduling and service snafus, cost overruns, and worsening congestion – to plan the future? MTC can barely manage transportation. Who benefits from also putting it in charge of housing, the environment and our economy? Is it reasonable to assume, in times of rapid change, that MTC can craft a sustainable, economically viable 30-year plan.
A BROKEN PROCESS
- Silicon Valley cities like Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos – where
- problems are worst – are excluded!
- Random comments on Post-It notes next to smiley or frowning faces is not a scientific method for gathering meaningful data.
- Participation depends on who shows up at farmers markets and local events. This process excludes collective community discussion, replacing it with decisions made by politicians and special interest groups behind closed doors.
- MTC/ABAG plans are not working for most Bay Area residents.ABAG’s Regional Plan 1970-1990 and 2013 Plan Bay Area did not save us from unsustainable growth, congestion, inadequate public transit, unaffordable housing, job loss and huge income gaps.
- We pay a high price for MTC/ABAG. In 2018, total salaries with benefits for 333 employees totaled $43.3 million.
Solano County General Plan Requires Vote
The Orderly Growth motto is, “What is urban should be municipal, and what is rural should be county.” California would look much more attractive if the Orderly Growth idea had been adopted throughout the state.
Taken
together, County policy, city urban growth boundaries, and community
separators have been important factors in Solano County’s quality of life. County leaders have pledged to defend them if challenged by policymakers or developers.
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The Great Read
In Solano County, Calif., a who’s who of tech money is trying to build a city from the ground up. But some of the locals whose families have been there for generations don’t want to sell the land.
When Jan Sramek walked into the American Legion post in Rio Vista, Calif., for a town-hall meeting last month, everyone in the room knew that he was really just there to get yelled at.
For six years a mysterious company called Flannery Associates, which Mr. Sramek controlled, had upended the town of 10,000 by spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy every farm in the area. Flannery made multimillionaires out of some owners and sparked feuds among others. It sued a group of holdouts who had refused its above-market offers, on the grounds that they were colluding for more.
The company was Rio Vista’s main source of gossip, yet until a few weeks before the meeting no one in the room had heard of Mr. Sramek or knew what Flannery was up to. Residents worried it could be a front for foreign spies looking to surveil a nearby Air Force base. One theory held the company was acquiring land for a new Disneyland.
Now the truth was standing in front of them. And somehow it was weirder than the rumors.
The truth was that Mr. Sramek wanted to build a city from the ground up, in an agricultural region whose defining feature was how little it had changed. The idea would have been treated as a joke if it weren’t backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires who included Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, the investor and co-founder of LinkedIn; and Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the Emerson Collective and the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. They and others from the technology world had spent some $900 million on farmland in a demonstration of their dead seriousness about Mr. Sramek’s vision.
Rio Vista, part of Solano County, is technically within the San Francisco Bay Area, but its bait shops and tractor suppliers and Main Street lined with American flags can feel a state away. Mr. Sramek’s plan was billed as a salve for San Francisco’s urban housing problems. But paving over ranches to build a city of 400,000 wasn’t the sort of idea you’d expect a group of farmers to be enthused about.
As the TV cameras anticipated, a group of protesters had gathered in the parking lot to shake signs near pickup trucks. Inside, a crowd in jeans and boots sat in chairs, looking skeptical.
Mr. Sramek, 36, who is from the Czech Republic and had come to California to try to make it in start-ups, was now the center of their economy. Flannery had become the largest landowner in the region, amassing an area twice the size of San Francisco.
Christine Mahoney, 63, whose great-grandfather established her family’s farm when Rutherford B. Hayes was president, told me that, like it or not, Mr. Sramek was now her neighbor. Ms. Mahoney had refused several offers for her land, and Flannery’s lawsuit — an antitrust case in federal court — described her as a conspirator who was out to bilk his company.
But she had never met the man in person, so she came to say hello.
“You might be asking yourself, ‘Why is this guy with a funny accent here?’” Mr. Sramek began the meeting.
He spent about 20 minutes pitching his plans before submitting to questions and resentments. People accused him of pushing small farms out of business. They said Flannery’s money was turning families against each other.
“Good neighbors don’t sue their neighbors!” one man yelled to applause.
Mr. Sramek, who is tall, intense and practiced in the art of holding eye contact, stayed up front after the meeting to glad-hand.
When Ms. Mahoney and her husband, Dan, 65, approached him, Mr. Sramek said, “Hi, Christine!” as if they had met several times before and he wasn’t currently suing her.
“I’d like to welcome you as our neighbor, but it’s kind of difficult,” Ms. Mahoney said.
She talked about how much stress the lawsuit had put on her family.
Mr. Sramek nodded, as if she were talking about someone else, not him. Then he asked the couple to dinner. The Mahoneys agreed.
Going to the Ballot
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One key difference between building an app and building a city is that a city requires permission. On Wednesday, Mr. Sramek’s company officially filed a proposed ballot initiative that would ask voters to buy in. Specifically, the measure aims to amend a longstanding “orderly growth” ordinance that protects Solano County’s farms and open space by steering development to urban areas.
Solano’s residents have consistently backed the city-centered-growth laws, so Mr. Sramek’s project is bound to be controversial. To overcome resistance, the initiative includes a long list of promises like new roads, money to invest in downtowns across the county and a $400 million fund to help Solano residents buy homes.
Mr. Sramek also revealed that he hoped to build directly next to Rio Vista, with a half-mile-wide park separating the old farming town from the new tech city. Renderings that his company released this month portray a medium-density community that is roughly the opposite of a subdivision, with a grid of rowhouses that lie a short walk from shops and have easy access to bike lanes and bus stops. He said the first phase of building could accommodate around 50,000 people.
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Even if the measure gets on the ballot and passes, it will be one step on a path requiring approval from county, state and federal agencies — a long list of ifs that explains why large projects are usually measured in decades, not the few years that Mr. Sramek seems to imagine.
It’s a crucial step, however. Beyond amending the ordinance, a win would pressure county officials to work with Mr. Sramek, so opponents are already lining up. A group called Solano Together, a mix of agricultural and environmental organizations like Greenbelt Alliance, recently created a website that characterizes the project as harmful sprawl that would destroy farms.
The fight is something of a throwback. Whether it was paving over San Fernando Valley orange groves to build out Los Angeles or ripping out apricot farms in what is now Silicon Valley, California became the nation’s biggest state and economy largely by trading open and agricultural land for population and development.
That shifted in the 1960s and 1970s, when a backlash against the growth-first regime and its penchant for destroying landscapes helped create modern environmentalism. In the half-century since, this turn has been codified in laws that aim to restrict development to existing cities and their edges. It has protected farms and open space, but also helped drive up the cost of living by making housing scarcer and more expensive to build.
Mr. Sramek framed his proposal as a backlash to the backlash, part of an ideological project to revive Californians’ appetite for growth. If the state is serious about tackling its dire affordable housing problem, he argued, it doesn’t just have to build more housing in places like San Francisco and its suburbs — it also has to expand the urban footprint with new cities.
As a matter of policy, this is hard to dismiss. This is politics, however, so the bigger question is whether voters share his desire to return California to an era of expansion. And whether — after six years during which Mr. Sramek obfuscated his role in Flannery’s secret land acquisition, along with the company’s billionaire backers and true purpose, all while pursuing farmers with aggressive tactics and lawsuits — they find him trustworthy.
The Golden Boy vs. 1877
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Christine and Dan Mahoney’s house looks onto a barn that says 1877, the year Ms. Mahoney’s great-grandfather built it.
When I met the couple for an interview at their house last year, Ms. Mahoney had decorated the dining table with black-and-white pictures of relatives in button dresses and bonnets. Later we drove along roads named for her ancestors.
Winding through the hills, Ms. Mahoney ticked off parcels that belonged to the family, others that were owned by neighbors and more owned by Flannery. When I asked how she discerned the lines of ownership in an expanse of yellow grassland, she said: “You live here a hundred years.”
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Mr. Sramek, meanwhile, talks about growth in moral terms, as if progress and wealth are simpatico and the most consequential people are those who build big things and a fortune along the way.
Driving near the Mahoneys’ ranch recently, through the same yellow hills, he posited that the mix of wealth and innovation that has exploded in the Bay Area has happened only a handful of times in history. (Florence, Paris, London, New York, Chicago and “maybe L.A.” were some others.) We were 60 miles from San Francisco in a place where the tallest structures are wind turbines, but his message was that the region could be an economic sun, and that bringing more people in the orbit was worthy of the trade-offs.
An immigrant and striver who at 22 was a co-author of a book called “Racing Towards Excellence,” Mr. Sramek got his first spurt of publicity at Goldman Sachs, where the financial press hailed him as a “Golden Boy” trader and considered it newsworthy when he left, after two years of employment, to chase a bigger dream in start-ups.
His tech career was less sparkling. After Goldman, he moved from London to Zurich and started a corporate education company called Better. It operated for two years and prompted a move to San Francisco, where he founded a social media company, Memo, in 2015.
Memo was billed as a higher-minded version of Twitter and won praise from the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. That praise was delivered on Twitter instead of Memo, which was pretty much the story: Memo failed to rack up users and shut down after a year.
His failures aside, Mr. Sramek was smitten with the Bay Area’s culture of creative capitalism. He was less enamored with the actual place.
The mythical Silicon Valley was in reality a bunch of office parks and cul-de-sacs where subdivision-grade homes went for $2 million. The more picturesque and urban San Francisco was being consumed by rising rents and their attendant homeless problems.
Complaining about the cost of living, and the region’s inability to fix it, had become something of a side hustle for many Bay Area chief executives. And after Memo, Mr. Sramek started looking for a big disruptive idea for them to fund.
“If we go back six or seven years, the popular hit in the press was ‘Silicon Valley is not doing enough in the real world,’” he said. “And I was sitting there working on this.”
Flannery Associates
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Mr. Sramek likes to fish. The way he tells it, around 2016 he and his girlfriend (now wife) started making the one-hour drive from San Francisco to Rio Vista to catch bass on the Sacramento River. One of those trips, driving past pastures and grazing sheep, sparked an idea.
“What if you could start from scratch?” he said.
In a state whose agricultural bounty has historically been a function of moving water great distances, the area is something of an anachronism. For generations, families like the Mahoneys have practiced “dryland farming,” which means they rely on rain, not irrigation.
The Mahoneys talk about this the same way they talk about their land and family: with an emphasis on tradition and the romance of continuity. Mr. Sramek described the land as “not prime.”
The phrase angered several farmers at the Rio Vista town meeting, but in dollar terms it’s accurate. At the time of Mr. Sramek’s first fishing trip, land in the area was trading around $4,000 an acre — a pittance compared with a Central Valley almond orchard (about $10,000 to $55,000 per acre) or a Napa Valley vineyard (anywhere from $50,000 to more than $500,000 per acre), according to the California chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers.
Mr. Sramek starting doing research and soon found himself immersed in zoning policy and poring over old development maps dreaming of a start-up city. Investors were initially reluctant, he said, so he borrowed $1 million from friends and banks to put a deposit on a handful of properties, then hired consultants and land-use lawyers to assess what it would take to build there.
By now Mr. Sramek was well networked. He had done a fellowship at Y Combinator, the start-up incubator. He was in a book club with partners at Sequoia Capital. He was friends with billionaires like Patrick and John Collison, the sibling founders of the payments company Stripe.
The Collisons became two of Flannery’s first investors. Mr. Andreessen and Chris Dixon, also of the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, joined soon after, along with Mr. Moritz, who was Sequoia’s chairman. All of them helped Mr. Sramek solicit others.
In a 2017 note to potential investors I obtained, Mr. Moritz wrote that if “done right” the project could help relieve congestion and housing prices in the Bay Area, and mused about the potential to experiment with new kinds of governance. It could also be spectacularly profitable, he said: Mr. Moritz estimated that investors could make 10 times their money even if they just got the land rezoned, and far more if and when it was developed.
Flannery Associates was named for Flannery Road, which borders the first property Mr. Sramek bought. Aside from that detail and its Delaware incorporation, residents and public officials could find almost nothing about its shareholders or intentions. Just that it wanted a lot of land, didn’t care about the price and was willing to strong-arm owners when money didn’t work.
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In addition to working their own land, many farmers in the area lease parcels where they grow crops and graze animals. As Flannery consumed more and more property, people like Ian Anderson found themselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to rebuff its offers for parcels they owned — while at the same time farming land they rented from Flannery.
Mr. Anderson learned how vulnerable he was after a local newspaper quoted him saying that the company had begun insisting on short-term leases and that this made it increasingly difficult to farm. Later, Flannery’s lawyer sent him a letter informing him that it was terminating multiple leases covering thousands of acres.
“The Andersons have made it clear that they do not like Flannery,” according to the letter. “The Andersons are of course free to have their opinions, but they cannot expect that Flannery will continue to just be a punching bag and lease property to them.”
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Representative John Garamendi, a Democrat from the area, characterized moves like this as “mobster techniques.” The bigger concern was that Flannery’s holdings had grown into a giant mass that butted against Travis Air Force Base on three sides.
The proximity to the base alarmed both the county and the Department of Defense, which prompted local officials and members of Congress to call for investigations. The investigations elevated the mystery of Flannery Associates into a mainstay on local TV news.
“The F.B.I. was investigating this, the State Department was investigating this, the Treasury Department was investigating this — all the local electeds were trying to get information and calling their legislators,” said Representative Mike Thompson, another Democrat from the area.
The company remained silent.
Mr. Sramek said Flannery had operated in secret to prevent landowners from jacking up prices, and defended the lawsuits as just. He argued that while some farmers didn’t want to sell, most had done so willingly — at prices no other buyer could offer.
“We paid way over market value, and created hundreds of millionaires in the process,” he said. “We are glad that we have been able to settle most of our disputes, and we are open to settling the remaining ones.”
A Simple Case of Wealthy Landowners?
By 2023, Mr. Sramek and his investors were in deep. Flannery had spent some $900 million buying 60,000 acres. The first two rounds of funding, at about $10 million each, had ballooned to several more rounds at $100 million each. (Mr. Sramek said the company had now raised “more than $900 million” but would not be more specific.)
Big investors begot bigger investors, and the list expanded to a roster of Silicon Valley heavyweights including Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Powell Jobs.
The company’s offers became so generous that many farmers decided they couldn’t refuse.
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The Mahoneys sold Flannery a few hundred acres early on. (Their land is owned by several different entities and hard to tally overall, but in the 1960s Ms. Mahoney’s father told a newspaper that he had 16,000 acres in the area.) But as Flannery gobbled more of the land around them, Ms. Mahoney said, she realized that something big was happening and that their entire farming business could be at risk. So the family stopped selling to Flannery. The company persisted with more offers, however, improving terms and increasing prices to levels that would have netted tens of millions of dollars. The family continued to say no.
Flannery arrived while the Mahoneys were in the midst of transition. Over 150 years, the family’s company, R. Emigh Livestock, had expanded from two dozen lambs to one of largest sheep farmers in California. Ms. Mahoney’s father was in his 90s (he died last year) and she was passing leadership to her son Ryan, who said his wish was to stay there until he was in his 90s, too.
You wouldn’t know it from her jeans or penchant for nostalgia, but Ms. Mahoney had spent her career running a corporation, one whose business was raising lambs and cattle. She was, like Mr. Sramek, a C.E.O.
And after years of back and forth, one thing Flannery’s entreaties had made clear was that there was one property the Mahoneys owned that it coveted above the others: Goose Haven Ranch. But Goose Haven was the one the family was most protective of. It had been the center of the lambing operation long enough that the road leading up to it was designed for wagon traffic.
Elsewhere in the county, Flannery had started buying into farms by acquiring shares from family members who wanted out, then becoming what amounted to unwelcome partners with the ones who remained. Two of these arrangements led to lawsuits between Flannery and the other owners. Both settled, but one of them netted a trove of emails and text messages among several neighbors including the Mahoneys.
In May, Flannery used those messages to file an antitrust suit against the Mahoneys and several holdouts. The suit contended that the farmers were colluding to raise prices, describing them as “wealthy landowners who saw an opportunity to conspire, collude, price fix and illegally overcharge Flannery.” It asked for $510 million in damages.
The complaint describes the messages (like Ms. Mahoney writing to a neighbor, “That’s great that we can support each other!”) as “a smoking gun” proving that the defendants did want to sell but at even higher prices than Flannery was offering.
In a joint motion to dismiss, lawyers for the Mahoneys and other defendants described Flannery’s lawsuit as “a ham-fisted intimidation technique” designed to smother them with legal fees.
Even after being sued, the Mahoneys still had no idea who Flannery actually was.
The Campaign Apology Tour
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In August, The New York Times broke the news of who was behind the purchases. Mr. Sramek confirmed his role, and soon topped his LinkedIn profile with a new title: chief executive of California Forever, the company’s new name.
He has been in campaign mode ever since, meeting with elected officials, union leaders and environmental groups. California Forever has opened four offices across the county, and Solano’s freeways are now plastered with California Forever billboards.
In a state where it can take years to get a duplex approved, Mr. Sramek seems to have calculated that his project is too big to fail. Developers, planners and lawyers I spoke to all expected the project to either never happen or take at least 20 years. Whether out of bluster, delusion or confidence, Mr. Sramek, who recently bought a house in nearby Fairfield, said he had promised his wife that their infant daughter would start school in the development he wanted to build.
He didn’t find some secret hack that can make California an easier place to build. Rather, he believes the state’s attitude toward growth is changing. Californians, he thinks, have grown frustrated — with punishing housing costs, with homelessness, with the state’s inability to complete projects like the high-speed rail line that was supposed to connect the Bay Area and Los Angeles but has stalled. So just maybe his will, and gobs of money, can create a new posture toward growth.
“There’s a cultural moment where we realize the pendulum has gone too far,” Mr. Sramek said. “We can’t say we are about economic opportunity and working-class Californians are leaving the state every year.”
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Last year’s event in Rio Vista was held at the end of lambing season in December. Before the meeting, I dropped by a barn with the Mahoneys where a group of “bummers” — lambs born weak or to overburdened ewes — were in sawdust pens drinking milk. They would be chops in less than a year, and Ms. Mahoney cooed to them between my questions.
I asked her a crass but obvious one: why the money from Mr. Sramek, those tens of millions, wasn’t enticing.
“Everybody has their price, right?” she said. “I’ve heard that so many times. ‘Everybody has their number — what’s your number?’ I guess I haven’t found it yet.”
“When God calls us home, that’s our number,” Mr. Mahoney joked. “Totally different philosophy.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Sramek returned to the American Legion post in Rio Vista. This time he had arrived as part of a kickoff event for the ballot initiative. Neighbors and protesters had returned but were prohibited from going inside, where slides of maps and renderings were presented to the press, and details about design were discussed.
The maps had a curious detail: On the edge of the proposed community’s downtown was Goose Haven Ranch.
The night before the meeting, the Mahoneys sold it. They got about $23 million.
Conor Dougherty is an economics reporter and the author of “Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America.” His work focuses on the West Coast, real estate and wage stagnation among U.S. workers. More about Conor Dougherty
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 21, 2024, Section BU, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Snapping Up Farmers’ Land to Create a City. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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