California Forever, a company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, filed its ballot initiative with the Solano County Registrar of Voters on Wednesday, seeking to bypass protections put in place to keep agricultural land from being turned into urban space. The group hopes to build at least 20,000 homes in rural Solano County and establish a new city where it has bought up $800 million of rural land over the years.
The initiative proposes to build a new community on 78 square miles, with “middle-class homes” in safe, walkable neighborhoods, according to plans on the company’s website. The plan also includes a commitment to bring good-paying jobs in advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, construction, and other industries, as well as large investments in education, green spaces, clean energy, and the revitalization of downtowns across the county.
On the east side of the new community, the initiative would create the Rio Vista Parkland, a 712-acre open space resource with parks, sports facilities, and bike paths. Once the initial phase of the build out were to be completed, representatives for the project estimate the community could be home to 50,000 residents. Eventually, the city could grow to 400,000 people.
Proponents of the project say Solano County is the ideal place to build with its location near Travis Air Force Base appealing to military contractors. However the project has its opponents as well.
“Buying up farmland at low prices and rezoning for housing development has been a quick way to make a buck for decades in California,” the Solano Farm Bureau said in a statement released by Solano Together, a coalition that opposes the initiative.
For its part, California Forever says the new community is located on non-prime farmland, and intentionally avoids the county’s most sensitive habitats, including Jepson Prairie, Suisun Marsh, and Cache Slough.
Once the initiative receives a ballot title and summary from the county, California Forever will need to collect signatures from roughly 13,000 county voters to place the measure before voters in November.
According to the AP, project’s backers include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Incentives highlighted in the proposal include millions in contributions for protecting existing green space within the county, $70 million in community benefits funding to help Solano residents pay for college, vocational training, or to start or expand a small business, and major road upgrades.