California Not-so-Forever

Aerial rendering from California Forever (SFGate)

California Forever's plans to build a utopian city in Solano County have suffered a setback. The group pulled its November ballot measure: [bold added]

that measure, if passed, would have removed some zoning restrictions that prevent this type of development in the area.

California Forever will instead "submit an application for a General Plan & Zoning Amendment and proceed with the normal County process which includes preparation of a full Environmental Impact Report and the negotiation and execution of Development Agreement,” Solano County Board of Supervisors Chair Mitch Mashburn said in a statement Monday.

The news was celebrated by many in Solano County, where skepticism about the project ran deep. The group’s secretive purchases of huge tracts of land first brought about national security fears, even from local politicians, who had no idea who was behind the project. When the plan to build a futuristic city was announced, California Forever faced widespread pushback, ranging from concerns about billionaire backers like Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs to questions about the impacts on traffic, water usage and proximity to Travis Air Force Base.

Almost every Californian involved in a construction project groans under the entanglement of red tape, and the billionaire investor group is no exception.

Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs are ardent supporters of the Democratic Party--most recently they have pledged support to Kamala Harris' Presidential run--implying that they want to spread California's Progressive principles to the rest of the country.

However, when it comes to their business, they can't stand living under those strictures either.

Dead Giveaway

We take a break from the busy-ness and stress of Thanksgiving week to admire the handiwork of thieves:

Two people were arrested early Friday morning for allegedly driving a stolen vehicle outfitted with a handwritten license plate, Benicia police said...

A check of the Kia’s vehicle identification number indicated the car had been reported stolen out of Alameda County, according to Benicia Police Lt. Kenneth Hart.

The driver, identified as 38-year-old Angel Rachiene Bolton from San Jose, was arrested for allegedly possessing the stolen vehicle and for allegedly possessing a narcotics pipe located inside the car, Hart said.

The passenger, a 30-year-old man from Alameda whom police did not immediately identify, was also allegedly in possession of a narcotics pipe and was booked for possessing a controlled substance. Hart added that the passenger had three out-of-county warrants out for his arrest.

I wonder what gave the police a hint that something was amiss. It could have been the hand-drawn alphanumeric characters or the lack of colors on the "plate" and the month and year "stickers." For me it would have been the duct tape, the dead giveaway that something is not professionally done.

Utopia in Solano County

Flannery Associates has published drawings of the new city it plans to build in Solano County. As others have noted, the new city seems positively utopian: [bold added]

The Silicon Valley billionaire-backed plan to build a 21st century utopian city on agricultural land on the edge of the Bay Area has a name and a website featuring the first renderings of what the Solano County dreamland might look like.

The initiative’s name — California Forever — was unveiled Thursday afternoon after a two-week period in which the group’s acquisition of 55,000 acres in southeast Solano County has come under fire from politicians, farmers and environmentalists....

The first renderings from California Forever evoke a cityscape with a dreamy white stucco and red rooftop Mediterranean vibe that might be found in a Greek or Italian village. There are hillside neighborhoods stepping down to what must be the banks of the Sacramento River, kayakers tooling through lily pads and anglers fishing from the riverbank at sunrise.

The irony of this plan is that, toward the end of the 20th century, San Francisco was well on its way to becoming just the sort of paradise that California Forever envisions for Solano County.

What derailed San Francisco was not sinister outside forces but its own policies toward drug use, homelessness, and crime and punishment.

Without firm actions to prevent the same from happening to their utopia, the California Forever reality will never come close to the idyllic pictures that were shown us this week.

On the bright side, these "average billionaire" investors are in their 50's and 60's and have experienced triumphs, failures, and a few tragedies. They're not teenagers who have no idea how to execute a utopian construction plan (for example, see high-speed rail).

They've earned the benefit of the doubt.

Not a Sinister But a Hopeful Sign

(WSJ map)

Seven weeks ago we posted our take on the mysterious Flannery Associates that had bought 52,000 acres near Travis Air Force Base.

Personally, I think that the land purchases have been too extensive ($800 million) to be for a [Chinese] 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.

My predictions were close to the mark.

Tech Leaders Emerge Behind Plan to Build New City Near California Air Base

A group of high-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors emerged Friday as backers of a group that plans to build a new city in Northern California, after its purchases of land around an Air Force base had raised national-security concerns among U.S. officials.

Flannery Associates said Friday it planned to construct a new housing development in the area...

The group’s investors include a high-wattage list of technology entrepreneurs and investors, according to a person familiar with the group. They include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; former Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz; and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, who are general partners at Andreessen Horowitz.

Other investors include Patrick Collison and John Collison, co-founders of Stripe, a payments processor to internet companies; Laurene Powell Jobs, a philanthropist and the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs; and Nat Friedman, the former chief executive officer of GitHub.

The $1 billion spent so far is small potatoes compared to the combined net worths of the billionaires named as purchasers. That said, it will take multi-billions more, plus a time horizon of at least two decades to see just the initial returns from this project.

We will likely find that the investment is being made by trusts for the benefit of the billionaires' children and grandchildren, with the development profits escaping estate taxes.

Additional comment: California is not totally lost if some extremely wealthy people still regard California as a place to make money from very long-term investments.