A group of elite Silicon Valley businessmen went ahead and snatched up all the land and now they want to build an urban utopia for progressives on it. That plan is really ticking off the farmers, ranchers and other residents who live there to escape the noise, crime, and general hassles of the city. We’ll see what happens because, as the saying goes, “those who have the gold make the rules.”
Progressive urban utopia
The plan calls for a new urban center that’s actually “green.” A consortium of Silicon Valley billionaires just revealed to the public that they’re the ones behind “a secretive $800 million land-buying spree in Northern California.”
They surfaced by circulating a “poll” to “gauge support” for “a new city with tens of thousands of new homes.” It would be powered by a “solar energy farm” and chock full of “new parks funded entirely by the private sector.” They don’t mention where they plan to siphon the water from.
Former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek has been “ducking scrutiny” for years, while quietly “spearheading the effort.” On Thursday, August 31, he launched a website revealing “California Forever.”
A vague website attempts to justify building a new city near San Francisco with pretty pictures and promises of a better life. https://t.co/UrkrGCfhMN
— The Verge (@verge) September 3, 2023
There, they boast how the private sector financed urban development is “a chance for a new community, good paying local jobs, solar farms, and open space” in Solano. That’s described as “a rural county between San Francisco and Sacramento that is now home to 450,000 people.” Ones who like living in the country.
It seems to some people that the rich boys have been playing “SimCity” and think they can build a real one to match their progressive fantasies of what they think a city should be. They’re using all their money and lawyers to meet “with key politicians representing the area.”
Those same politicians are breathing a heavy sigh of relief to learn it isn’t the Chinese or Russians “behind the mysterious Flannery Associates LLC as it bought up huge swaths of land, making it the largest single landholder in the county.” It made them especially nervous because the land for the new urban utopia sit right next to “a U.S. Air Force base vital to national security.”
Mostly U.S. investors
Flannery managed to stay in the shadows but according to the new website, “97 percent of its funding is from U.S. investors and the rest are from the United Kingdom and Ireland.” That has everyone wondering if this deal had anything to do with why Hunter Biden and his aunt Val tagged along with Joe to Ireland recently.
“The FBI, the Department of Treasury, everyone has been doing work trying to figure out who these people are,” lawmaker Mike Thompson observes. “Their secrecy has caused a lot of problems, a lot of time, and a lot of expense.” All they want to do is build an urban utopia full of low income housing, they insist. What could be wrong with that?
They had to keep it secret, they claim, “until enough land was purchased, in order to avoid short-term speculation.” Now that they’re out of the closet, they’re “ready to hear from Solano households via a mailed survey and creation of a community advisory board.”
JUST IN: The Silicon Valley billionaire-backed scheme to build a 21st century utopian city on agricultural land on the edge of the Bay Area has a name and a website featuring the first renderings of what the Solano county dreamland might look like.https://t.co/3kEICKlsPf
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) September 1, 2023
Past surveys “showed parents were most concerned about their children’s future,” the group notes. They didn’t have a clue that there would be an urban city popping up next door when they filled those out, though.
The big clue to the developer’s true motives is the location. It would be perfect for them, their friends and their families. The talk about “affordable housing” is smoke and mirrors. “It is 60 miles northeast of San Francisco and 35 miles southwest of California’s capital city of Sacramento.”
Solano County homes “are among the most affordable in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a median sales price of $600,000 last month.” Taxes are low, too. Local resident Princess Washington is “suspicious that the group’s real purpose” is “to create a city for the elite.” She notes urban “economic blight is everywhere. So why do you need to spend upwards of a billion dollars to create a brand new city when you have all these other things that can be achieved throughout the Bay Area?“
