CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2024 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D.
ELIAS
“SOLANO COUNTY
PLAN COULD HAVE CHANGED HOW CALIFORNIA DEVELOPS”
A measure
allowing voters in Solano County this fall to approve – or not – a vast new
development about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco just might have been the
most influential local ballot proposition California has seen in decades. If it
had gone forward.
This measure
would have allowed a brand-new full-scale city to be built by a corps of
billionaires as a partial solution to the housing shortage that has wracked the
state’s lifestyle and politics for years, threatening both the nature of many
neighborhoods and the independence of city governments.
But the
billionaires pulled their proposition from the ballot at midsummer because they
thought it might lose.
Instead of
piecemeal infill developments and replacement of mini-malls and other
relatively small buildings with huge high-rises containing hundreds of
apartments and a few stores, this plan could have seen an entire new city
plopped down on open space and farmland.
Land for this
already belonged to an outfit called “California Forever,” which quietly spent
years buying up pieces of property south and west of Suisun City, Fairfield and
Rio Vista, eventually aggregating 50,000 acres. The billionaires, who did this
gradually in order not to drive the price of land to forbidding levels, include
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist Mark Andreessen, Lauren
Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and former Goldman Sachs
trader Jan Sramek, with Sramek now the project CEO.
Their purchases
at one point had federal officials suspecting foreign agents might be angling
for access to intelligence about the nearby Travis Air Force Base, a key
facility for military flights to the Far East.
But this was no
spy adventure. Rather, it’s a land use gamble, with the investors banking on
the 259,000 registered voters of a medium-sized county about midway between San
Francisco and Sacramento to okay a gigantic new kind of development. It won't
go forward this year; but maybe next time.
The proposed
new city was to be completely walkable and bikeable and might eventually house
as many as 400,000 persons. So large a development by itself could put a
sizeable dent in the state’s housing shortage, promoters say. They said they
had arranged with a dozen potential employers to provide at least 15,000 jobs
for residents in fields from retail sales to robotics.
Instead of
parks and schools going in gradually while new residents filter into a raw
development, all 17,500 acres in this one were to be ready almost
simultaneously – stores, homes, apartments, parks, schools and offices all
opening about the same time.
The
billionaires also promised a $500 million fund to help new residents make down
payments on homes. They planned a new sports stadium (are you listening, former
Oakland A’s, now that Las Vegas shows signs of stadium hesitation?). Public
transit would exist from the get-go.
It all would be
a huge contrast with the way other cities – even master-planned ones like
Irvine in Orange County – arose, with their sometimes haphazard placement of
buildings, homes, parks, schools and other services.
The notion of
using currently open land contrasts sharply with the trend of the last 10
years, stressing ever-greater urban density and the remaking of cities under
threats of state legal action or funding cutoffs for services like police and
sewers.
If the Solano
County plan eventually happens, some of the vast desert spaces north and east
of Los Angeles might also eventually find themselves hosting large new
developments.
That’s the way
much of California was built, long before politicians like Democratic state
Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco successfully campaigned to make urban sprawl
political anathema.
But voters in
Solano County apparently were set to say no to all this. Now no one is quite
sure what happens next in a high-stakes story that could eventually affect
not only Solano County but the entire state, whose development priorities could
stand some major changes.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net