Billionaire City: The Ideal City Silicon Valley Wants to Build

When Flannery LLC began contacting all landowners in Solano County in 2018, a sparsely populated region covered with ranches and wind turbines located 100 km from San Francisco, to purchase all available parcels, concern swept through the residents. Nobody could discern who was behind the structure, including politicians. Gradually, all agricultural land parcels were acquired by the obscure buyer, with purchase prices far exceeding market value. Becoming the largest landowner in the county, the company fueled rumors and divisions. Recently, in 2023, the Delaware-based company filed lawsuits against numerous families, accusing them of inflating prices and demanding the $170 million it claims to have overpaid in the scam, yet revealing little about themselves.

A Disney park? A Chinese invasion? A deep-water port? Media, residents, public officials, and even congressional representatives from the area, concerned about the nearby air force base, speculated until residents began receiving surveys from California Forever last August. The surveys, conducted by the organization now attached to Flannery, sought opinions on several issues, including voting intentions regarding a hypothetical project for a "new city, including tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million trees planted, more than 10,000 acres of parks, and open spaces."

At the same time, the organization sought a meeting with John Garamendi, one of Solano's two congressmen, to present its project. (“This is their first effort, ever, to talk to any of the local representatives, myself included,” he said.) The project? Transforming this arid area, intersected by a two-lane highway between suburbs and rural lands, into an ultramodern community with tens of thousands of inhabitants, clean energy, public transportation, and dense urban life.