Jan Sramek was 15 years old when he first tried to get a government to do what he wanted. At the time, he was an internet and sci-fi obsessed teen growing up in Drevohostice, Czech Republic.
The problem was that his town of 1,400 had only a dial-up connection. He persuaded the local government to pay an internet service provider to provide the city with a broadband connection. He even got a commission for it, Mr. Sramek wrote in “Racing Towards Excellence,” a sort of self-help book for aspiring young adults that he co-wrote in 2009.
Mr. Sramek’s next campaign could be more profitable. It can also be longer, more difficult and, in all probability, nastier.
The revelation last week that Mr. Sramek is leading a group of Silicon Valley moguls in a bold plan to build a new city on a rolling stretch of Northern California farms and windmills was the unofficial start of what has been a protracted and expensive political battle promises to be. campaign.
In a state where land politics are so tough that it can take years to build a duplex, it can be a ten-year process before even the shovel is lifted on the project.
That kind of timeline will most likely test the patience of investors — including venture capitalists Michael Moritz, Marc Andreessen, and Chris Dixon, as well as Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, venture capitalist, and Democratic donor, and Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective – who are used to the fast-paced and lightly regulated world of technology.
First, there will most likely be elections. Solano County has long had a slow-growth ordinance that county voters would likely have to override before any major building could begin.
Then comes a slew of environmental regulations, inevitable lawsuits, and potential battles with the state’s Air Resources Board, Water Resources Control Board, Public Utilities Commission, and Department of Transportation—not to mention the local planning commission and board of directors. regulators who oversee land use. in the province of Solano.
Some experienced developers say that the project’s chances are so slim that they will be amazed when it becomes a reality. “I hope they succeed,” says Mark Friedman, a long-time Sacramento real estate developer, “but this seems like a lot of techies with a lot of money and a lot of hubris are throwing themselves into another business that they can’t possibly do. to understand.”
Mr. Sramek declined to comment on Monday, and a spokesperson referred to an earlier statement from the project’s financiers: “We are excited to begin working with residents and elected officials of Solano County, as well as Travis Air Force Base.”
For the past five years, the group has used a company called Flannery Associates to spend about $900 million to purchase tens of thousands of acres of farmland in Solano County, on the northeastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. The purchase of so much land by a company whose activities and intentions were unclear had sparked fear across the region and prompted two members of Congress to launch federal investigations.
The fact that no one within the company tried to assuage these fears – most likely because they feared that disclosing themselves would raise the price of land – has created a long line of irritable elected officials.
“We got the FBI and the Treasury involved,” John Garamendi, a Democrat and congressman from the area, said in a recent interview. Even though representatives for Flannery had contacted his office for a meeting, he said, he didn’t know who they were or what they were doing until DailyExpertNews revealed it to him last week.
Now Flannery is trying to go from stealth to charm mode. It has hired political consultants and approached regulators, the governor’s office and members of Congress. Ultimately, the group is likely to appeal to voters with a full-fledged political campaign focused on economic development.
Although firmly in the Bay Area, Solano is the poorest county in the region. The household income of $87,770 is about two-thirds of the median income of $141,562 in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s also a geographic jumble with parched farmlands and Travis Air Force Base, the US military’s busiest airport and gateway to the Pacific Ocean, along with cities like Vallejo, a working-class town that has become a haven for highly paid construction and service workers. of the inner Bay Area.
Flannery’s purchases are concentrated in the undeveloped eastern half of the county and consist of a chessboard of lots. Part of that land seems destined for the hypothetical city, the exact location of which is not yet clear. The rest could be used as political chips to create conservation programs, green energy projects and recreational facilities in an attempt to curry favor with politicians and voters.
Whatever campaign Flannery is running is also likely to generate promising jobs for voters in cities like Vallejo and Fairfield in exchange for permission to build on sparsely populated farms some 45 minutes away.
As of Sunday, residents of Rio Vista, a city of 10,000 on the Sacramento River, were still reeling at the prospect of billionaires turning a stretch of open field into a new city. Many were relieved to know the identity of the mysterious land buyer in the area, but also feared the potential impact of the proposal.
“There aren’t many people,” says Ashley Morrill, 40, who works at a sport shooting range in an unincorporated community called Birds Landing. “There are many windmills. It is in the middle of nowhere. You can’t get public utilities here. There is no public water or sewage.”
Some in the area were still reeling from the secrecy the land sale had shrouded. Theories ranged from wind farms to a new Disneyland to an imagined plot involving Chinese intelligence and a new port.
“A realtor came to my house on Christmas Day 2018 with an offer to buy my property,” says John Sweeney, who lives in Denverton, an unincorporated community next to Travis Air Force Base. “At the time, the land here was being sold for less than 2,000 acres, and they were offering $10,000 per acre.”
Mr. Sweeney said he was not selling, but he passed the offer on to his father-in-law, who did. After the deal was closed, he started following Flannery’s purchases on Facebook.
Now residents have new questions: how does a city come to life through one real estate owner? Will the proposal raise the prices of adjacent land? Will this lead to gentrification in what is now a rural town?
Flannery’s pitch should address these and more pressing concerns, state political advisers said. The project’s proximity to Travis Air Force Base is likely to lead to federal backlash. Powerful working class groups will have to be convinced that the plan will sufficiently benefit the unions. Environmental groups have already begun to oppose it, arguing that housing should be built closer to population centers.
David Townsend, a Democratic consultant with decades of land-use experience in Northern California, said local opposition was also likely to be significant in an agricultural region where many longtime residents had moved to escape development and traffic.
“What happens in these things is people show up in red T-shirts and shout that a bunch of rich guys who don’t even live here want to put 20,000 more cars on our roads, and what do we get for it? A few parks?” Mr Townsend said and added: “Something like this could take years and years.”
Holly Secon contributed to the reporting.
