Latest news with #CaliforniaForever
CBS News
4 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
California Forever offers Suisun City $1.5 million for some downtown properties
The Solano County land acquisition firm California Forever made an unsolicited offer to purchase up to $1.5 million worth of property owned by Suisun City in a formal letter to the city this week. The offer from California Forever comes about a week ahead of talks between the city and the company on whether the city will annex land owned by the company, which initially planned on building a new city on some of the more than 65,000 acres in the southeast part of the county that it acquired since 2018. The pitch, made in a letter Tuesday to the mayor, City Council and city manager, also included an offer to give a grant to the city for $55,000 to prevent the cancellation of community celebrations such as Fourth of July fireworks, a Sunday jazz concert series and other events that are at risk of elimination given the city's projected $1.3 million budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year. The letter was sent by California Forever founder and CEO Jan Sramek, who wrote that the company was interested in acquiring the downtown block containing the Lawler House property at 718 Main St., the Suisun Harbor Theatre next to it, and a building at 701 Main St., across the street. The city in 2023 put out requests for proposals to acquire and develop the Lawler House parcel. The house is a historic ranch house built in 1857 but was moved from its original site to the current site decades ago and has fallen into disrepair. An outside consultant appraised the property as worth $100,000 with the current structure, which needs to be torn down. The parcel was appraised for $150,000 if it was undeveloped. Suisun City and the city of Rio Vista are both looking to annex land that California Forever has purchased on the borders of both cities. The two cities have signed a memorandum of understanding with each other on long-term planning and have independently engaged California Forever in talks about annexation of property that the company owns. The company spent years buying up farmland before suddenly announcing a plan to incorporate a new city east of Travis Air Force Base. The company pulled its planned ballot measure in 2024 ahead of November's election that would have asked voters in Solano County to rezone part of the county to allow the city to be built. The company was criticized by community groups and lawmakers for its secrecy. More recently, the company has pursued a shipbuilding facility in the unincorporated bayfront community of Collinsville. Prior to annexation talks, California Forever's investors were still planning on developing a new city but agreed to complete an environmental impact report and development agreement with the county before putting a measure before voters. Suisun City City Manager Bret Prebula said he approached the company in January with a proposal to incorporate much of their planned development area into the city limits of Suisun City. The company indicated it was interested in such a deal, and an agreement for the company to reimburse the city for staff time and other costs associated with the process is being drafted, along with details about the annexation plan. Prebula said the agreement would likely include the city incorporating roughly 15,000 to 20,000 acres, including the area of the company's proposed East Solano Plan, but said those talks were still in the early stages. The land would be incorporated over 40 years, which Prebula said would lead to measured growth. "If we grow by 10,000 people in 10 years, I'll be a happy camper," Prebula said. He said it would take decades for the city to be anywhere near the population of nearby cities such as Fairfield and Vacaville. Prebula said the properties the company approached the city about had all been up for sale and had long been vacant or in disrepair. He was unsure if the theater, Lawler House, or a brick building at 701 Main St., which previously had iterations as a bank and a restaurant, could be made useable. Sramek said the company wanted to collaborate with Suisun City and its community to "design something wonderful" to "enhance the vibrancy of the downtown." But he hedged on whether such development would actually materialize. "We want to be upfront and clear that we cannot commit to constructing a downtown property on a standalone basis, as we do not yet know whether we can identify a project that meets the city's requirements, that the community is excited about, and that can be commercially built," he wrote. "As you know, many of the cities in Solano County have been looking to redevelop lands in their downtowns, but generally it has been challenging for any such projects to be commercially viable," Sramek's letter said. The City Council is scheduled to consider the annexation reimbursement agreement with the company at its next meeting on Tuesday. If finalized, the annexation process would begin in earnest and would probably take between 18-24 months before a plan is finalized for consideration by the county's Local Agency Formation Commission. The company's offer to purchase the properties downtown will be considered sometime this fall.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire utopian city launches new shipyard plan
A group of Silicon Valley billionaires' plan to construct a utopian 'city of yesterday' remains on hold until at least 2026. In the meantime, California Forever is pursuing an alternative option for some of its 60,000 acres purchased through years of stealth real estate dealings. According to Rio Vista mayor Edwin Okamura, early discussions are underway to transform a portion of California Forever's land into a largescale shipbuilding port. 'A proposed site for this initiative is near Collinsville—an area long suspected as a potential port,' Okamura wrote last week in a social media post. Preliminary conversations also included potential tax incentives, federal infrastructure funding, and 'immediate job creation.' The Solano County town of Collinsville is located roughly 40 miles from San Francisco on the Sacramento River, which ultimately feeds into the Pacific Ocean. Attempts to build a new shipbuilding port in the area date back to at least 1989, and focus on an estimated 1,400 acres previously identified for maritime industrial uses. Although no longer the hub it once was, Solano County and the surrounding region has a deep shipbuilding history that dates back to the opening of Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINS) in 1854. MINS was central to the development and expansion of US naval capabilities for nearly 145 years, particularly when it came to World War II build-up efforts. It also served for decades as a submarine port. The US government finally closed operations for around 7,500 remaining MINS employees in 1996. California Forever publicly announced its $900 million East Solano Plan in August 2023. Envisioned as an idyllic 'city of yesterday,' the new town's founders boasted it would feature 'novel methods of design, construction, and governance.' California Forever's pitch arrived after years of aggressive real estate dealings funded by a group of secretive investors led by former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek. Backers were eventually revealed to include wealthy Silicon Valley venture capitalists like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Lauren Powell Jobs, billionaire philanthropist and widow of Steve Jobs. The East Solano Plan received almost immediate pushback from both local residents and politicians, who criticized the organization's opaque real estate dealings and lofty promises. Meanwhile, environmental groups criticized the project's supposed eco-friendliness, with the Sierra Club describing the overall goals as a 'hostile takeover' of vital agricultural and natural landscapes. Facing mounting pushback, California Forever withdrew an initial measure to fast-track plans that was slated for inclusion on the region's November 2024 election ballot. Representatives at the time said they would instead pursue the East Solano Plan through standard channels, including a full, independent environmental impact review along with preparing a development agreement with local county supervisors. 'I know from where I stand today, I support this maritime industrial opportunity,' Vacaville mayor John Carli told California's Daily Republic newspaper last week, adding his belief that it presents 'one of the most significant opportunities we have here in Solano County.' Carli also confirmed representatives from the US Navy were a part of the early discussions. The latest pivot arrives less than a month after President Trump announced intentions to revitalize US ship manufacturing. During his first state address on March 4, Trump referenced an impending executive order aimed at jumpstarting efforts to compete with China's longstanding commercial shipbuilding dominance. A draft of the 'Make Shipbuilding Great Again' executive order obtained by The Washington Post also claimed the president would direct Congress to appropriate funds towards the creation of a US Office of Shipbuilding. Executive orders are not functionally identical to federally passed laws, and can be legally challenged. Meanwhile, maritime experts have already expressed doubts about the feasibility of the Trump White House's vows for a quick return to domestic ship and naval manufacturing. 'It appears to be written by people who have absolutely no idea how the maritime supply chain works,' Lars Jensen, CEO of Copenhagen's Vespucci Maritime consultant agency, said of the EO earlier this month. Jensen cited President Trump's ongoing tariff war provocations, particularly those affecting steel and other manufacturing imports, as counterintuitive to any domestic shipbuilding goals. The 'Make Shipbuilding Great Again' order has yet to be published. 'We used to make so many ships. We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon,' President Trump vowed earlier this month. In an email to Popular Science, a California Forever spokesperson clarified that even if shipyard plans do progress, the project isn't a 'shift away from the city,' but did not provide more details at the time of writing.
The Guardian
28-03-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The controversial California city backed by tech elite has a new plan: boats
In 2023, a group called California Forever, funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, introduced a splashy proposal to build a new city on tens of thousands acres of farmland it had acquired north-east of San Francisco. Residents and officials of Solano county, where the city would sit, were frustrated by what they saw as a lack of local input and concerned about wealthy outsiders with big plans to reshape their region. After months of extensive news coverage and efforts to woo over local leaders, California Forever changed track: withdrawing a ballot measure that would have fast-tracked the plans and instead seeking approval through standard county processes. This month California Forever found itself back in the spotlight for a new proposal, and one that has been greeted far more warmly – using the land it owns for the creation of a shipbuilding hub. The Trump administration has reportedly drafted an executive order to revitalize the shipbuilding industry in the US. The company, which now owns more than 65,000 acres in Solano county, said in a statement that Solano 'is uniquely positioned to answer the call for rebuilding our nation's naval power' and that it could 'drive economic revitalization' across the region. 'We are very early in the process, and are working with elected officials and local communities to explore how we can best use these assets to support American Sailors and stimulate economic growth in our cities, county, and broader region,' the company said in a statement. Solano county, located about 60 miles from San Francisco, is home to nearly 450,000 people and has a history of shipbuilding. It was the site of the first US navy base on the Pacific Ocean, which operated for more than 140 years. Today the largest employer in the region is the Travis air force base – the country's busiest – which as more than 10,000 personnel. California Forever began buying up land in the county in secret years before going public with their plans for a new city. They promoted the effort as a solution to California's housing crisis and said the new city – with its utopian vision of green infrastructure and walkable neighborhoods – would bring extensive new job opportunities to the region and pledged that the project would not impose any financial obligations or taxes on residents outside the community. But they quickly encountered intense pushback. A local chapter of the Sierra Club described the company's efforts as a 'hostile takeover'. Last year, they withdrew the measure from the ballot and agreed to an environmental report and development agreement on the project. Meanwhile, last year as Joe Biden expressed interest in bringing shipbuilding back to the US, the company was in touch with local officials expressing interest in pursuing such an opportunity on the west coast. Then last week Edwin Okamura, the mayor of the Solano county town of Rio Vista, announced that he had met with California Forever representatives, retired military leaders and other officials in the county to discuss the matter, and a proposed site near the small riverside settlement of Collinsville. John Carli, the mayor of Vacaville, said that he also visited the area and met with retired military officials who said the site was one of the most ideal locations in the US and described a shipbuilding operation there as a 'one-of-a-kind opportunity'. That site, California Forever said in its statement, has more than 1,400 acres of land that was proactively zoned for 'maritime industrial uses'. It would be used a manufacturing and assembling location rather than a port, Carli said. The effort is still in its early stages, officials have said, pending the executive order. But so far, officials in the region have expressed enthusiasm about efforts to expand the maritime industry. Alma Hernandez, the mayor of Suisun City about 30 miles north-west of Collinsville, said in a statement that the city backs an expansion. 'Suisun City stands in support of a regional effort to invite the US government and leading defense contractors to invest in Solano county's future,' Hernandez said. 'Our region has a proud history of shipbuilding – it is part of our identity. We are eager to contribute in every way possible to ensure maritime success in our region.' The benefits would extend far beyond the shipyard, Carli said, pointing to the more than $2.7bn in economic impacts the air force base has in the region. And a maritime industrial base would be a benefit to the air force base, he said. With the history of shipbuilding in the region and the role it plays in US defense, it makes sense to have this kind of project here, said state assembly member Lori Wilson, and it would bring significant opportunities. If it were to move ahead, Wilson expects the shipyard could become the largest employer in the county. Wilson said she had heard from many constituents about the project, most of whom were supportive. Some have expressed concern about the environmental impacts of the maritime industry and the role of California Forever, given the level of distrust that exists with the organization. The lawmaker has herself been skeptical of the company. 'That's something as a legislative representative for this area I'm mindful of, but it's not something I can address. It's up to them to build trust.' Still, even those who did not support plans for a new city are interested in this project, Wilson said. 'Folks are really excited about this opportunity and [the potential] for shipbuilding to come back to Solano county. There is a groundswell of support for this project and I'm really excited to do my part to bring this to fruition.' Carli expects the community will look beyond the landowners. 'I'm confident residents will recognize and support this project if the opportunity would present itself here locally,' Carli said. 'It merits thoughtful discussion with the community to understand this is different than a proposed city.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's 'Freedom Cities' Are a Devious Scam
Tech bros love to repackage old ideas as innovation. We've all seen it. But their latest foray into disruption no one else wants, the so-called 'network state' and its constellation of start-up cities, deserves our attention. This notion has been embraced by President Donald Trump, who has rechristened them 'freedom cities.' In reality, the scheme is a techno-fascist vision of the future that's been quietly but persistently pushed and funded by billionaires such as Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Brian Armstrong, and Sam Altman for years. Despite the shiny marketing materials for places like Próspera and California Forever, which make outlandish promises of futuristic utopias, the start-up city as a concept is a modern, ketamine-infused repackaging of something that flopped into obsolescence long ago: the company town. And I would know. I grew up in a coal-mining town in Southwestern Wyoming and compiled an oral history of the place called Out Here On Our Own. I talked to multiple people who grew up in the old coal camps where one company owned and controlled everything. The surveillance, the practice of paying workers in dubious currency (commonly referred to as 'scrip'), and the ultimate goal of creating small fiefdoms for company masters—it's all been done, and to horrific effect. From staggering rates of suicide and addiction to a constant sense of fear among citizens, the trauma of living in a company town cascades through generations. The company town framework gained steam during the Industrial Revolution. Pullman, Illinois, is a notorious American example. George Pullman, who owned Pullman Palace Car Company, forced people to work interminable hours in unforgiving factory conditions, and he paid them in scrip that was worthless outside his own stores. In 1893, Pullman cut workers' wages by 25 percent without lowering rent on their homes—not to mention the grocery prices in those same company stores—which led to fierce labor organization efforts and the bloodiest strike America had seen. The Pullman strike showed the world that the company town was a doomed experiment in human control. But the industrialists of the time were every bit as hubristic as today's tech oligarchs. They saw Pullman as a barometer for how much cruelty workers would endure before revolting. The profit margins were too enticing to abandon the model altogether, so company owners built fiefdoms across the country, albeit in slightly less extreme forms. The end result was always the same: worker organization—and often violent revolt. Coal, steel, and lumber companies set up camps and towns across the West based on where those resources were abundant, not where people wanted to live. My hometown, Rock Springs, is a paragon of that phenomenon. It's a windy, barren, and often frigid place that never would've been colonized and developed as somewhere to live were it not for its surfeit of coal. Coal jutted from the hills and badlands in the area. Union Pacific, or UP, didn't hesitate to lay tracks, dig mines, and set up a network of mining camps. By the early 1900s, Rock Springs grew into a proper town that was, for all intents and purposes, owned by Union Pacific. The company built shoddy housing with paper-thin walls for workers who toiled in mines where they were as likely to get mangled by runaway pit cars as they were to die in cave-ins or explosions. One former resident recalled visiting his uncle in company housing: 'The UP coal houses were stark. They were clapboard, and I remember the linoleum being all worn out. The lighting was simply a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.' Meanwhile, Union Pacific Coal raked in a fortune. Then, as now, my hometown had crushing rates of addiction and suicide. With miners regularly dying at work, the experience of living there was defined for many by despair. As if that wasn't enough, Union Pacific evicted families from their meager homes whenever miners got killed. Former inhabitant Les Georgis told me about an explosion near Rock Springs that killed several miners. Following a mass funeral, where 'the miners were laid out like cordwood,' Union Pacific evicted surviving family members from their homes, leaving them to fend for themselves. 'My wife's grandma had been living in a coal camp house, and she had a little baby,' Georgis said. 'The coal company told her that, since her husband wasn't around to work the mine anymore, she had to move out. They put all her stuff out on the street. I knew another family that happened to as well.' Such cruelty combined with harsh conditions in the mines to push miners to organize and strike. Union Pacific's desire to own and operate coal mines deflated when the train company switched to diesel engines, but Rock Springs and its satellite settlements still relied on coal mining. Union Pacific shuttered its mines with no concern for how people would survive. Other coal companies had moved in over the years, but UP closing its mines was a massive blow. The company simply boarded them up and left. Abandoned mines caused subsidence in neighborhoods where houses warped and sank, but what did Union Pacific care? Growing up in a mining town, and the conversations I had with multiple generations of residents, made it clear to me that it's a colossal mistake to allow companies and investment groups to build towns where they're free to do as they please. There have been efforts over the years to prevent company towns from forming again, but that hasn't stopped corporations like Amazon, Google, and Meta from flirting heavily with the concept. The network state movement goes well beyond those prior flirtations: It seeks to form a collection of corporately owned charter cities where regulation doesn't exist. This idea started gaining momentum with the publication of Silicon Valley gadabout Balaji Srinivasan's book, The Network State, which put him firmly in the company of those tech barons who've made democracy itself a target of their ire. Srinivasan argues that nation-states are dying and should be replaced with a global collection of corporately controlled enclaves, each functioning as its own de facto country. In his view, we should dismantle and replace countries like the United States, as engineers would an outmoded piece of software. Seen by tech fascists as an appealing alternative to democracy, the network state is the company town framework on a cocktail of steroids, ketamine, and life-extending placebos. Rebranded as freedom cities, this sophomoric thought experiment has been given the green light by Trump. But for the call to disrupt democracy, this movement has few, if any, new ideas. A direct callback to the use of scrip in company towns, cryptocurrency is a key component of freedom cities. One function of unregulated scrip in places like Pullman was to further ensnare workers by controlling their spending power and ability to leave. Paying workers in crypto coins, each of which is highly mercurial and vulnerable to scams and price manipulation, would provide similar levers for control. (It's worth noting that Amazon uses Swag Bucks, its own version of scrip, to reward high-performing employees, despite scrip becoming illegal in 1938.) What's truly disturbing is how far along the network state movement has gotten. Located off the coast of Honduras, a start-up city called Próspera hosts medical facilities that are free to explore genetic experiments with abandon. According to The New York Times, a construction worker died building Próspera. He fell to his death during a blackout. In northern California, a real estate coalition dubbed California Forever seeks to create its own city that local residents fear will buy up all the land, clog roads, and pollute their skies. Elon Musk's SpaceX owns Starbase, Texas, which poses threats to local wildlife and uses the old-hat tactic of filing employees away in company housing. The conditions of Musk's prefabricated homes are obviously better than the old coal camp houses, but there's still the question of what would happen to an employee's family if they got fired, especially in the face of eroded regulation and a CEO who thinks empathy is weak. As with company towns, where spying was a common tool to crush dissent and disrupt collective action, each of these start-up cities is, or will be, subject to relentless surveillance. Representative democracy has always been the enemy of plutocrats like George Pullman, Peter Thiel, Brian Armstrong, and now Elon Musk. Whether you call it a company town or a freedom city, the goal is the same: to foster a fascistic version of capitalism where company owners are free to explore the depths of their greed and sadism. But as Trump allows such ghouls to form their so-called freedom cities, those of us who've learned from human history will do well to recall that this has all been tried before—and remember the Pullman strike.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
WATCH: LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman Joins The Daily Beast Podcast
The political circus may have been in town in D.C. this week with a host of contentious hearings for a series of President Trump's Cabinet nominees, but it was also down in Florida where Trump was hosting a GOP retreat at his Doral golf course. On this week's The Daily Beast Podcast, co-hosts—and ringmasters—Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee offered intel on it all. After staking it out in 'Trump country' for the retreat, The Daily Beast's Senior Political Correspondent Juliegrace Brufke provided an inside peek at 'policy discussions and poolside mingling.' Brufke described the scene as like 'a large company retreat' with tax policy sessions and a 'unifying speech' from Trump, though his subsequent funding freeze announcement rather left lawmakers scrambling—and not just for their sunscreen. The Beast's Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty addressed RFK Jr.'s 'incredibly testy' Senate confirmation hearing, noting that the Kennedy scion's nomination has been 'tearing apart a family like we've never seen.' Despite his cousin Caroline Kennedy's accusations that RFK Jr. as a 'predator' with 'dangerous and willfully misinformed' views, most Republicans still appear hesitant to reject him outright. 'I am so distressed that anyone is taking this person seriously," said an exasperated Bee. 'I want a vaccine against RFK Jr.,' added Coles. The podcast closed with an interview with Reid Hoffman, who is backing "California Forever‚" a planned utopian city in the Golden State's Solano County, outside of San Fransisco. 'Building new cities is actually the kind of really big, ambitious thing that we should do more of,' Hoffman argued, noting that he plans to 'invite all (his) friends" to town. New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Thursday. Like and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. And click here for email updates as each new episode drops.
