The California Dream, Deferred
A billion dollars buys land. It does not buy permission. In Solano County, northeast of San Francisco past Travis Air Force Base and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, Jan Sramek owns 68,000 acres of rolling grassland. He sees a city of 400,000 residents. California sees a problem.
Bari Weiss writes, "My foundational belief when I started this was that the situation in California would get worse." Sramek, 38, immigrated from the Czech Republic in 2013. He expected California's housing costs to climb. He expected companies to flee. He expected voters to remain "hoodwinked into this degrowth mind-set." So he raised over a billion dollars from tech founders—Reid Hoffman, the Stripe brothers, Marc Andreessen—and started California Forever.
The Regulatory Wall
Weiss writes, "I told them, 'Hey, you should invest in this crazy thing that no bank or private equity firm or anyone else would touch.'" The land acquisition worked. Flannery Associates bought parcels between Fairfield and Rio Vista, paying millions to existing owners. The permits did not work.
Sramek spends more time "pushing paper and paying lawyers" than designing or building. The California Environmental Quality Act, enacted in the 1970s, now applies to private projects. Anonymous complaints trigger indefinite proceedings. Weiss notes the act has "metastasized like cancer."
The state cannot maintain what exists. The high-speed rail project has stalled for twenty years. A bus shelter called "La Sombrita" cost $100,000 and casts almost no shade. The Santa Ynez reservoir sat empty during Los Angeles fires. Meghan Daum spent two and half years trying to build one home on a vacant lot. She gave up. Fewer than a dozen of the 13,000 homes lost in last year's wildfires have been replaced.
"The land is ready. The plans are ready. The workers are ready. All we need is permission to get to work."
The Vision
Weiss writes, "The way we've done urbanism has been a huge contributor to this whole loneliness epidemic that everyone is talking about." Sramek wants walkable streets. Front porches. Kids walking to school safely. "One of the official design goals for the city is that it should be the most kid-friendly city in America."
Starter homes around $500,000. A subsidized general store. Two coffee shops—one pretentious, one not. Air Force personnel from Travis. UC Davis faculty. Construction workers. Founders. Artists.
Weiss writes, "There is a pronatalist component to this." Multiple generations on the same block. Fifteen-minute drone flights to San Francisco. Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. A foundry. A manufacturing park. A shipyard on the Sacramento River to compete with Chinese maritime production.
The Counterpoints
Critics might note that a private city built by one billionaire and his tech investors raises questions about democratic governance. Who votes on zoning? Who controls the water pipes? Critics might also observe that Solano County residents have already shown resistance to large-scale development imposed from outside. And the China competition framing—Sramek says, "The idea that America can win in any kind of an industrial conflict against China without California getting back to what it used to do is naive and wrong"—may oversimplify both the threat and California's role in it.
The Verdict
Weiss writes, "California must build, Sramek insists, to relive its glory days." The state once defined eras—New York, Chicago, LA, Pittsburgh, Detroit. Sramek wants Solano County to define the next one: American reindustrialization.
Bottom Line
California Forever is a test case for whether private capital can overcome public paralysis. The money is ready. The land is ready. The question is whether California's regulatory architecture will allow construction to begin—or whether the state's degrowth mindset will defeat even a billion-dollar dream.