By Beau Cline
In late July of 2023 Travis Air Force Base was suddenly alerted that nearly $1 Billion worth of land surrounding the base had just been purchased by an anonymous firm called Flannery Associates LLC . The firm had bought around 55,000 acres of farmland in Solano county on 3 different sides of the Air Force Base. At first, the purchase of land was intimidating with Sarah Donnelly a city council member saying this “It feels nefarious to need all of the land to the point where you’re going to sue them to intimidate them to sell to you – those aren’t farmers.” Donnelly was right on the money, these were not farmers, and they had very big plans for this mass amount of land they just bought.
This mystery group buying all the land was Flannery Associates LLC, a company ran by Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader and now multi millionaire investor with a dream to build a new city from scratch. This dream started with Jan, back in the Czech Republic where all of his family members worked very hard in blue collar industries giving him a deep appreciation for the value of skilled crafts and skilled labor. In about 2014 he decided to move to the bay area, and was met with a combination of capital and creativity with culture and talent that’s been a part of the bay for over 50 years now. He instantly fell in love with the bay but it was right at the time housing costs were beginning to rise immensely. He was met with an interesting problem: we had the innovative engine developing new ideas, and products that helped the whole nation, however the housing wasn’t able to keep up with the growth of the city.
Now that the problem is figured out, what was Jan going to do to try and solve it? The answer seems very straightforward: build more houses, make more space for new industries, and keep the big tech companies from leaving. Unfortunately this is far more difficult than it sounds, however that didn’t stop Jan from trying to achieve his dream. His first step was gathering the funds to make this distant dream seem a little more obtainable. So he gathered a few of his friends, people you might have heard of like Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve jobs widow and infamous businesswomen and executive, or Reid Hofman linkedin co-founder , and Marc Andersson one of Silicon Valley’s greatest venture capitalists to name a few. With an all star roster of investors and all the money they could want, they started Flannery Associates LLC. This name should sound a little familiar as they were the ones alarming the air force base as they bought $800,000 worth of land. This process did take around 5 years as they started their purchasing frenzy in 2018. This process wasn’t without any turbulence though. In may of last year Flannery Associates sued dozens of landowners for jacking up sales prices, many of the ranchers reached settlement’s.
The next step for the city was getting the public on its side, for that they launched California Forever. This was a website and company dedicated to displaying the progress of this new city. Their first plan was to put an initiative on the Solano county ballot in November for the redistricting of 18,600 acres of land for the project. To get their project on the ballot they had to present the county with 13,000 signatures from residents of the county. These signatures caused some problems when residents came out saying these door to door signatures collectors were pressuring people to sign and were using promises not 100% guaranteed. All we can do now is wait and see how the November election goes, potentially starting the future of a new Bay Area city.
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