The Silicon Valley billionaires seeking to scheme and bully their way into building a utopian new city 50 miles northeast of increasingly dystopian San Francisco face a barrier that voters established to stop a similar project four decades ago.
Back in 1982, San Francisco real estate developer Hiram Woo announced plans to establish Manzanita, a new city of 5,000 residents on an expanse of agricultural land in Solano County, California. He spoke of building 2,000 solar-powered homes surrounded by open space laced with walking and biking trails. He said there would be schools and shopping and recreation facilities.
But one thing Woo did not offer was a reason why Solano needed a city in addition to the seven that already existed in a county of ranchers and farmers, some of whom had been working the same land for generations.
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Among the newer arrivals was Craig McNamara, son of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He and his wife, Julie McNamara, had just purchased a walnut farm.
“[We] were young first-generation farmers and recognized that a development like Manzanita would not support itself in terms of the infrastructure and city services,” he told The Daily Beast on Monday.
The McNamaras formed the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee and with their allies collected enough petition signatures to put a measure on the ballot restricting development to within the limits of the county’s seven existing cities for at least 10 years. The measure, Proposition A, passed and was renewed in 1994 and then incorporated into the county plan. It is not due for revision until 2028.
In the meantime, a mystery that seems to have had no equal in the history of real estate development began unfolding in 2017. An entity named Flannery Associates started purchasing thousands of agricultural acres in Solano, often for sums far exceeding the appraised value, for a total of around $800 million. The principals of the firm remained anonymous, and among the Solano residents who became increasingly concerned was Bob Berman, the current head of the Orderly Growth Committee.
“Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing,” Berman told The Daily Beast.
Until late last week, when The New York Times reported that the investors in Flannery Associates included a host of Silicon Valley billionaires who wanted to create a new city. A survey sent to residents of the Solano city of Fairfield indicated that the plan eclipses anything Woo contemplated decades before. One question asked participants if they would approve or disapprove of a new city “with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open space.”
Berman pledged that the Orderly Growth Committee will oppose the Fairfield project just as it had Manzanita in 1984.
“We’re going to work like hell to defeat it,” he said.
Flannery Associates is already playing rough. The company has filed a federal suit against a group of Solano farmers, alleging that they violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by engaging in illegal price fixing when they discussed among themselves whether they should sell their land and for how much. The suit suggested that such supposed conduct was criminal and could result in a prison term. Court papers indicate that one defendant has settled; others have moved to have the case dismissed.
“The Sherman Act was not intended to prevent local landowners from discussing with their neighbors negotiations with prospective purchasers or property prices,” the farm owners say in court papers. “Far from being an intended beneficiary of the Sherman Act, Flannery admits that it seeks monopolistic landholdings.”
The motion added, “Flannery’s complaint is a square peg in the round hole of antitrust law.”
Fear of being sued has spread even to landowners who do not want to sell. Mayor Ronald Kott of Rio Vista told The Daily Beast that he knows one farmer who refused a Flannery Associates offer.
“His basic premise is, ‘This is my family homestead. It’s been in my family for generations and I just don’t want to give it up,’” Kott said. “I don’t think he was named in that lawsuit, but he’s afraid that he might get named.”
Kott concluded, “It’s kind of a bullying tactic on their part.”
Another farmer who also refused an offer and also asked not to be named for fear of legal repercussions said that a Flannery emissary who was pressing for a sale seemed unable to grasp that land could have an emotional value that cannot be measured by money.
“He looked at me like I was absolutely insane and then kept trying again,” the farmer said.
Duane Kromm, a former member of the county Board of Supervisors, told The Daily Beast that some farm families are being torn apart between those who want to sell and those who do not. He said those being sued are “distraught.”
“They’re being pushed off land they farmed for generations because of these rich, arrogant…LOMBARDS.”
He explained that he was using an acronym that happens also to be the name of a street in San Francisco: “Lots of Money But a Real Dickhead.”
He said these Silicon Valley investors had swept in and purchased $800 million in land without consulting with local leaders or explaining where they will get the water for their new city—beyond just saying they will build a new aquifer. Water is presently allocated by a county board with representatives from the cities and the farmers.
“It’s done very collaboratively and there’s not a drop left for being reallocated to somebody else that just parachutes in and says, ‘Hey, I need water for, you know, 10 to 20,000 houses,’” he said. “You can’t build a community without water. “
Kromm mentioned another key element.
“They make it sound like they’re gonna build some sort of a utopia,” he said. “Just money doesn’t build Utopia. It takes people, it takes a lot of people, it takes a lot of time and a lot of joint effort and working together to make a strong community.”
He spoke of that other rich guy who wanted to build Manzanita in the 1980s.
“It was this kind of out-of-the-blue big investor coming in saying, ‘I could build you a new town,’” he said. “So the community rose up.”
This time, he said, they would be rising up against people with what he terms “massive, just unbelievable amounts of money.” And Flannery Associates could move as early as next year to put an initiative on the ballot to revise the law.
“Having spent $800 million already, to spend another $5 million or something on a campaign, that’s chump change,” Kromm said. “This is an order-of-magnitude different kind of a challenge that I think we have in front of us.”
