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A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has been snatching up land in a northern California county in an apparent bid to build an entirely new city in the state.
The company, Flannery Associates, has spent $800 million to purchase thousands of acres of farmland in Solano County, which sits northeast of San Francisco, court documents obtained by Insider show.
Flannery’s backers include Andreessen, Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others, according to the report.
In 2017, Flannery Associates pitched an idea to turn the Solano County land into a walkable city powered by clean energy and housing tens of thousands of residents, The Times reported.
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed in July, the landowners said that they have “either engaged in good-faith, arms-length transactions for the sale of land, or were not tempted by Flannery’s prices, because they had no desire (or ability) to sell.”
In 2016, Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, began looking into how it could build a city that could address California’s affordable housing crisis.
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Good bot but there is a big concern
The Wall Street Journal reported that Flannery has purchased about 52,000 acres of farmland around Travis Air Force Base since 2018. According to the report, government officials began investigating the purchases due to concerns that foreign interests may be behind the company.
“So the entire base is encircled now,” Catherine Moy, mayor of Fairfield, told ABC 7 News. “So there’s no part that isn’t touched by Flannery.”
Little is known about Flannery Associates or its specific city plans.
If I were to create a city that can withstand the downfall of society, I would want to put a defensive military fortress at its center. Right now, they don’t run it, but when the shit hits the fan, they can inherit an arsenal of protection.
Sounds like the plot from a James Bond book…
There’s literally nothing about this that’s described as a mystery…? It’s stating all the facts…
They won’t have to pay as much for employees to rent an apartment from their company than they would for their employees to rent a San Francisco apartment.
Except for that initial $800 million, plus the billions it will cost for infrastructure.
Yeah, and the absolute worst thing is they’ll be swarmed with applicants. A job and guaranteed housing I can afford? Guaranteed to be able to afford food and lunch etc? Deals on partnered electronics? I’m even willing to bet they’ll allow remote work when you live there. To the average person it looks like a great deal. It makes life simple.
But when you want to switch jobs to boost your salary you’re faced with having to move and finding a new place to live in the bay area isn’t easy. Then the issue of leaving the town meaning leaving friends, changing schools if you have kids and everything that entails. Not to mention if your partner also works there. There will be a lot of people effectively stuck. That feeling of not having a choice, of being stuck is really insidious.
And with depressed wages, which won’t impact them much while they work since they get housing and stuff cheaper. But come retirement the life time of lower earnings will rear its ugly head.
This is already the plot of Parable of the Shower by Octavia E Butler. It does not end well.
