California Forever's project plans to establish a new sustainable city with architectural homes of various sizes and costs in walkable neighbourhoods near shops, schools, and open spaces around the community.
The US company's partners include: Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder; venture capitalist Michael Moritz; Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the philanthropic group Emerson Collective and wife of the late Steve Jobs; Marc Andreessen, the investor and software developer; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payment processor Stripe; and the entrepreneurs Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman.
The firm recently went public in announcing the launch of a new solar-based community from scratch that stretches across 55,000 acres of land in Solano County.
California Forever's new website depicts Mediterranean-styled homes and solar-based-agricultural activities. The people living in the county were illustrated cycling instead of driving.
Sustainable, liveable, and walkable
A statement by the company said that Jan Sramek, CEO, who founded the company in 2017, was inspired by his fishing trips in Solano County’s Californian Delta. He aspires to build walkable, liveable, and sustainable towns and cities.
The company is collaborating with Solano residents, elected officials, and other Solano stakeholders, including Travis Air Force Base, businesses, the agriculture sector, educators, police, the fire department, conservation agencies, and many others.
New solar-based community set to begin construction. Image: California Forever.
This announcement comes after The New York Times reported that Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader, utilised $800m in funding from prominent tech industry investors. The investors acquired more than 100 unexplained parcels of land through an entity known as Flannery Associates LLC. The newspaper also named the aforementioned partners.
The group’s statement relayed: “To date, our company has been quiet about our activities. This has, understandably, created interest, concern, and speculation. Now that we’re no longer limited by confidentiality, we are eager to begin a conversation about the future of Solano County.”
Large solar farm plans
The project plans to establish a new sustainable city with architectural homes of various sizes and costs in walkable neighbourhoods near shops, schools, and open spaces around the community. They added that it could bring “thousands of permanent, good-paying local jobs” and a large solar farm.
Brian Brokaw, the spokesperson for California Forever, said: “We are grateful to our elected officials for allowing us the chance to discuss our vision to deliver good-paying jobs, affordable housing, walkable communities, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, open space and a healthy environment.
“Our team is working closely with the community and will continue to meet with local leaders to craft a shared vision for Solano County’s future.”
Energy, transportation, water, and wildfire protection is the undertaking’s responsibility. The company emphasised that Eastern Solano benefits from existing transmission lines that could make it possible to build a large solar farm. This would initiate hundreds of jobs and accelerate California’s transition to clean energy.
California Forever intends to institute significant upgrades in the North Bay Aqueduct that will pave the way to deliver cleaner and more reliable water to more than 500,000 people in Solano and Napa counties.
“Solano’s rural fire districts need more money to keep communities safe from wildfires. We cannot solve any of these issues on our own, but we want to be part of larger regional solutions,” stated the organisation.