Company Buying Land Near CA Military Base Reveals Their Plans And Investors

Photo bySolano County

We have finally learned some information about the shadowy company buying up land near California’s Travis Air Force Base. The CEO has been revealed, along with the fact that the company has many ties to Silicon Valley.

The company has bought over 50,000 acres of land near the base since 2018, causing worries about our domestic military security to ripple across California and the country. On September 1st, a website launched that introduced the mystery LLC’s parent company, California Forever.

The website shares plans for a full-fledged urban development, creating a new city in Solano County around the air force base. The plans have not been approved and, if many local elected officials have their way, they never will be.

In the last days of August, the leadership of California Forever began to come to light. With investment from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Marc Andreessen and Steve Jobs’ widow Lauren Powell Jobs, the company is led by CEO Jan Sramek.

According to ABC7, California Forever plans to create an entirely new city over the farmland they’ve acquired: “The new city would be in eastern Solano County.” California Forever claimed they had good intentions: “The group is focused on affordable housing, clean energy, and sustainable infrastructure.”

The company, known previously only as Flannery Associates LLC, is now known to operate under the umbrella of California Forever. In the past, we knew that 97% of investment was American. While speculations ran wild that China was behind the other 3%, it turns out that the 3% comes from Ireland and The UK.

The California Forever website claims the company operated in secrecy for so long, “to avoid creating a rush of reckless short-term land speculation.”

The website shed light on who the investors were and where they came from. The site also illuminated a lot of information about their plans. According to Fox59, “The website, which launched Thursday, features information about a survey conducted by the company, renderings of what the community would look like, and more information about the two companies, which it says are seeking to build a new ‘sustainable community.’”

Many local officials say that those plans will never come to fruition because that land is only zoned for agriculture and that local government is unsympathetic to California Forever’s aims.

County administrator Bill Emlin says the development is a non-starter. According to Emlin, "The voter-approved general plan and orderly growth ordinance allows only for agricultural uses on the majority of land California Forever has acquired."

California representative for Solano County, Democrat John Garamendi, says the firm’s plans will have a negative impact on national security, stating, "It's very, very clear that they intend to go to an initiative to change the zoning requirements for that entire 55,000 acres. In doing so, they may very well diminish or eliminate the protections that Travis Air Force Base presently has. So I remain very, very concerned.”

After the backlash to their proposal, California Forever said they intended to use some of the purchased land to grow olive trees. However, it seems that what they are really planning is to erect a city around a California military base, and that has Garamendi and other leaders concerned.