Mystery company buys land in California to build a new city

A mysterious company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has bought land in a northern California county, apparently trying to build an entirely new city in the state. The edition told in more detail Business Insider.

Photo: IStock

The New York Times reported that these investors include some of the Valley's most recognizable names, from Marc Andreessen to Laurene Powell Jobs.

Flannery Associates spent $800 million to purchase thousands of acres of farmland in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco.

The Wall Street Journal reported that since 2018, Flannery has acquired about 52 acres (000 ha) of farmland around Travis Air Force Base. According to the report, government officials launched an investigation into the purchases out of concern that foreign interests could be behind the company.

“So the whole base is now surrounded,” said Katherine Moy, the mayor of Fairfield. “There’s not a single part that Flannery hasn’t touched.”

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Little is known about Flannery Associates and its specific plans for the city.

The company is led by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader.

According to the report, Flannery supporters include Powell Jobs, Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz, LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman, and others.

It is not clear how much each of them invested in this company.

In 2017, Flannery Associates floated the idea of ​​turning the land of Solano County into a walkable city powered by clean energy and accommodating tens of thousands of residents. Real estate data shows the current average home price in the county is $585.

Moritz said Flannery bought about 1400 acres (566 ha) of land for less than $5 an acre.

But since then, costs have skyrocketed: Flannery has spent up to $15 an acre, lawyers for Flannery Associates said in court documents.

Flannery's lawyers filed a lawsuit in May against a group of Solano County landowners, alleging they conspired to inflate land prices.

The lawsuit alleges that Flannery overpaid the owners approximately $170 million and is seeking damages of at least $510 million.

In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, filed in July, the landowners said they "either entered into bona fide, independent deals to sell the land, or weren't tempted by Flannery's prices because they had no desire to sell."

Silicon Valley has long sought to build a city from the ground up, sometimes with a utopian "smart city" concept.

In 2016, Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, began exploring how to build a city that could solve California's affordable housing crisis.

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“We want to build cities for all people—tech and non-tech,” the accelerator wrote. “We are not interested in building crazy libertarian utopias for techies.”

Tech founders, including Bill Gates and Elon Musk, also hatched ideas for their cities.

Musk recently purchased 3 acres (500 hectares) of land outside of Austin, Texas, to build a city he intends to name Snailbrook.

He envisions "a kind of Texas utopia along the Colorado River."

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