Techies behind Bay Area land grab launch website defending secrecy

The cadre of tech billionaires who mysteriously bought up 52,000 acres of land in Solano County has finally explained the reason behind years of secrecy — and announced the next phase of its recently revealed city-building project.

Flannery Associates and its newly unveiled parent company, California Forever launched a slick new website on Thursday packed with buzzwords and aspirational ideas for a massive project, building a new utopian city between Fairfield and Rio Vista. While the investors behind the group managed to remain anonymous for several years, the the New York Times recently revealed that the project is backed by a number of Bay Area billionaires, including Michael Moritz, Reid Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs, Marc Andreessen and Patrick and John Collison. Several backers have histories of criticizing San Francisco’s leadership and housing policies. 

The public-facing page likely marks the beginning of a larger goodwill campaign, since the group will need to convince county voters to approve any development at the site. Although the site is headlined, “Starting a conversation about eastern Solano County,” locals have already been talking about the proposed project, including Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy, who has very publicly denounced the plan. The group has managed to buy an area of land almost twice the size of San Francisco since 2018, despite both local opposition and allegations that local landowners have illegally colluded to drive up land prices. 

On its new website, the group defends its earlier secrecy, writing, “The only way to avoid creating a rush of reckless short-term land speculation was to not share our specific plans until we finished acquiring the properties.”

The group has already spent almost $900,000 million buying land, and according to the New York Times, they’ve already hired about three dozen people to work on the project. But to actually build anything, the group will have to bypass Solano County’s Orderly Growth Measure, a voter-passed ordinance that aims to counter urban sprawl and keep development within the county’s existing city limits. The current version of the law runs through 2028, but can be amended by a county vote.

According to the website, Flannery Associates plans to form a community advisory board of Solano citizens, send out a mail survey to the whole county, and open offices in Vallejo, Fairfield and Vacaville, creating local jobs and taking local perspectives into account. To succeed, though, the project will have to overcome both legal hurdles and strong opposition from local political leaders. That includes both Mayor Moy and Congressman John Garamendi, who represents part of Solano County.

“These characters have been engaged in despicable, secretive, terrible practices,” Garamendi recently told NBC Bay Area, adding that he planned to meet with the group soon.