Mystery Buyer

(WSJ map)

Flannery Associates has purchased 52,000 acres of land near Travis Air Force Base, which is off Interstate 80, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. Flannery's owners, sources of funds, and investment objectives are mysterious, at least publicly:

Acquisitions around Travis Air Force Base have raised security concerns among Solano County officials, who have been trying to determine the investors in Flannery and their plans for the land for years, said Bill Emlen, the county administrator.

County supervisor Mitch Mashburn said if Flannery intends to develop the land, it would make sense for the group to engage with local officials—but it hasn’t.

“The majority of the land they’re purchasing is dry farmland,” he said. “I don’t see where that land can turn a profit to make it worth almost a billion dollars in investment.”

Congress and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) have raised the alarm over the land's proximity to Travis AFB and Flannery Associates' changing story about its motives: [bold added]

Flannery has offered various explanations for its purchases over time. In 2019, Flannery attorney Richard Melnyk said in an email to a Solano County official that Flannery planned to work with local farmers and might explore “new types of crops or orchards,” he said, ruling out any cannabis operations.

In its May price-fixing lawsuit, Flannery said it planned to use the land for renewable energy and related projects. The entity has allowed many sellers to continue farming or remain on the land and collect income from wind turbine leases for the remainder of the lease, according to court filings.

In a June 5 email to Emlen reviewed by the Journal, Melnyk said Flannery was considering leasing “a substantial portion” of its land to olive growers, including some near Travis Air Force Base.

Personally, I think that the land purchases have been too extensive ($800 million) to be for a spying operation. More likely the ultimate goal is development; residential costs in Vacaville and Fairfield are all much lower than in the San Francisco Bay Area and expansion near there makes sense.

It also wouldn't be surprising if the buyer was a tech giant which has long-range plans to build a "company town" complete with offices, manufacturing, and houses. Far from being a concern, proximity to Travis AFB would be a plus if the hypothetical tech has aerospace elements.

Finally, it is preposterous to believe that government agencies don't know what's going on. All financial transactions that go through the banking system can be traced, and $800 million of land purchases cannot be opaque for long.

Curiosity makes it fun, but we'll know who's behind the whole thing soon enough. (And if we don't hear officially, then at least we'll know it's someone on our side, not a foreign actor.)