CEO Jan Sramek said Wednesday that the investors including billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Michael Moritz and fellow billionaires LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs, ‘are people who believe in California.’
Hundreds of thousands of residents. Thousands of well-paid jobs. Hundreds of millions of dollars in support for home purchases and low-income housing. Tens of millions of dollars in grants for education and training. Offices. Factories. Roads. Schools. Transit. Parks.
These are the promises from California Forever, the controversial company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires planning to build a new city from the ground up in Solano County. On Wednesday, the company revealed new details about the for-profit development and a proposed November ballot initiative to change the county’s general plan and zoning, which the project would require.
“Our proposal is for a walkable, medium-density, mixed-use community on 18,000 acres in eastern Solano County,” the company’s planning chief, Gabriel Metcalf, said at a news conference in Rio Vista near massive swaths of land the group has bought for the project. Metcalf is a former CEO at Bay Area civic-planning non-profit SPUR, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association.
California Forever aims to attract 400,000 people over the next several decades, making the city Solano County’s fourth-largest. For every 50,000 residents, California Forever said it would provide half a billion dollars in community benefits — $400 million for down-payment assistance to those buying homes or providing low-income housing, $70 million for scholarships, and $30 million for parks, open space, trails and support for agriculture.
CEO Jan Sramek said Wednesday that the investors, including billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Michael Moritz and fellow billionaires LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs, “are people who believe in California” and want to help make “actual life better for everyday Americans.” Sramek, 36, a former Wall Street trader, said he plans to move into the first home.
