A bunch of Silicon Valley billionaires led by former Goldman Sachs Group dealer Jan Sramek have quietly purchased up over $800 million value of Northern California farmland to create a brand new metropolis from scratch. However their imaginative and prescient of a sustainable utopia is drawing persistent opposition from locals who’re combating to protect a rural lifestyle.
On the first of a number of city halls meant to win over the neighborhood, Sramek laid out his imaginative and prescient of turning the land right into a dense, walkable metropolis that will create high-paying jobs and enhance financial development. However many residents at an occasion late Wednesday had been outraged by his proposal, shouting him down as a “shill” and “smooth talker” and leveling allegations that his firm, Flannery Associates LLC, engineered a secretive land seize.
The contentious assembly signaled the challenges forward for Sramek, 36, as he navigates the politics of rural Solano County, an hour north of San Francisco. As a part of an bold mission often called California Ceaselessly, he’s led the acquisition of 53,000 acres used largely for cattle grazing and farming. Backers embody Silicon Valley luminaries comparable to former Sequoia Capital Chairman Mike Moritz, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen.
“This might look like a crazy idea to some of the people in the room,” Sramek mentioned on the city corridor in Vallejo. “But so did most of the companies that they invested in.”
Sramek made his pitch on the Vallejo Naval & Historic Museum, as residents sipped complimentary apple cider and eggnog. The California Ceaselessly mission has announced 5 further conferences for December in different places. Sramek plans to hunt voter approval for his metropolis idea by means of a poll measure in November 2024.
Standing in entrance of a slide deck on the Vallejo assembly, he touted his “blue-collar” upbringing within the Czech Republic, a profitable Wall Road profession and the backing of big-name buyers. He additionally dangled the potential for inexpensive housing in a state the place expensive actual property and the excessive price of residing have prompted many residents to flee to states comparable to Nevada, Arizona and Texas.
“Everyone is shocked that schools are expensive and people’s kids are leaving the state and nobody can afford to live here,” Sramek mentioned. “It’s really simple. There’s just not enough homes in California, and we’ve really screwed it up over the last 40 years.”
His effort already faces an uphill battle. A coalition of farmers, mayors, and environmentalists have all criticized the mission for potential impacts to delicate habitats and agricultural companies, together with considerations concerning the safety of close by Travis Air Drive Base. The Sierra Membership, a number one environmentalist group, dubbed California Ceaselessly a “hostile takeover” this week.
“They’re not trying to listen to the community. This is a sales pitch,” mentioned Aiden Mayhood, a 22-year-old resident of close by Rio Vista, earlier than the city corridor in Vallejo.
Additional roiling the waters, Flannery is suing a gaggle of Solano landowners for allegedly colluding to inflate their property values. The Sramek-led firm is in search of at the very least $510 million in damages. The landowners deny wrongdoing.
‘Nothing Nefarious’
Sramek accused his critics of opposing new housing developments within the area no matter who’s behind the mission.
“The people who don’t like this project for ideological reasons have tried to weaponize the fact that this was bought in secret,” he mentioned. “There is nothing nefarious about it.”
In the course of the city corridor, residents repeatedly interrupted Sramek and shouted out their lack of religion in Wall Road trader-turned-novice developer. One of the contentious moments got here when Marge Develop-Eppard, a member of the Miwok tribe, mentioned Sramek had disregarded the area’s indigenous inhabitants and would “cement over” Native American burial grounds.
“What about the Native American graves that you’re going to be excavating and building on without even consulting us, the natives of this land?” she mentioned. “This is very disrespectful for us, and I’m sick of developers coming in and we don’t know nothing.”
Sramek mentioned he was a relative newcomer to the US, with solely a decade within the nation.
“I could not have done anything to your people,” he mentioned.
