The mystery of a California project to transform farmland into a new green city has finally been solved. This futuristic “big city” is the brainchild of a fledgling developer with the backing of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.
But despite the heavyweights behind the project, it has been embroiled in legal battles and drawn suspicion from talkative neighbors in and around Fairfield. Fairfield is a Solano County city about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.
friday, New York Times An entity called Flannery Associates LLC reportedly purchased more than 100 unidentified parcels of land from former employee Jan Sramek, 36. Goldman Sachs The trader has $800 million backing from some of the tech industry’s biggest investors.These include Sequoia CapitalFormer Chairman of the Board Mike Moritz, LinkedIn Co-founder Reed Hoffman, venture capitalists Mark Anderson and Chris Dixon, Lauren Powell Jobs, and others.
According to the Times, Moritz has proposed an urban development that could involve novel approaches to design, construction and governance — all within driving distance of San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Slamek did not respond to a request for comment. Investor representatives, including Andreessen and Dixon, either declined to comment or did not respond to requests.
Flannery spokesman Brian Brokaw said, “We are honored to partner on a project that will provide Solano County residents with good-paying jobs, affordable housing, clean energy , sustainable infrastructure, open spaces and healthy environments,” said in an emailed statement. “We are excited to begin working with residents and elected officials” and will begin meetings early next week.
Flannery’s project isn’t the first time a group of wealthy elites have decided to build a city according to their vision.
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world with a fortune of $221 billion. Bloomberg Billionaires Indexhas been buying land east of Austin, Texas, to build a town for employees of Tesla Inc., SpaceX and Boring Co. Victoria’s Secret billionaire Les Wexner built New Albany, Ohio, from a small community outside Columbus into one of the largest in the United States.USA most popular address. Larry Ellison, the world’s fourth richest man with a fortune of $129 billion, bought 98 percent of Lanai and transformed it into a paradise. super rich.
read more: Elon Musk’s planned Texas fiefdom is a billionaire tradition
Now, in California, Flannery is under scrutiny after a four-year acquisition spree that often snapped up farm land after farm at above-market prices.
Based on records filed with the tax office california secretary of stateIn Flannery’s office, Flannery listed its business as agriculture and incorporated it as a limited liability company in Delaware.Earlier this year, local media reported famous In total, Flannery acquired 52,000 acres, making him the largest single landowner in Solano County.
Flannery came under further scrutiny in May when it filed a lawsuit against a group of local landowners, accusing them of conspiring to fix prices and charge exorbitant fees when the company tried to buy properties. As part of the lawsuit, Flannery disclosed that since 2018, the company has been buying ranch properties in Solano County, spending more than $800 million.
In the lawsuit, Flannery alleges that some “conspirators” paid between $470 and $2,800 an acre for their properties, but was not satisfied when Flannery proposed $15,000 an acre . Instead, “they countered Flannery’s proposal by demanding a higher payment,” the complaint said.
Lawyers for the landowners want to dismiss the case, arguing that federal antitrust laws do not apply to individual landowners selling real estate.
Among them is U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat whose congressional district includes Travis Air Force Base, which is nearly surrounded by land owned by Flannery. Garamendi asked the Treasury Department, the FBI and the Air Force to investigate whether the buyer was connected to a Chinese company that tried to buy land outside Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota in 2022. The sale was rejected after the Air Force deemed the company a threat to national security.
Last week, Garamendi said his office was contacted by Solano County residents who received a poll via text message and phone call asking what they thought of “a city with tens of thousands of new homes, a massive solar farm, orchards. Perspectives on the development of new cities. With more than a million new trees, and more than 10,000 acres of new parks and open spaces. “
Garamendi said in an interview Friday that California’s complex zoning and development process makes it unlikely that Flannery will pass the voter-backed initiative required by state law to build thousands of housing units on land currently in use , roads, sanitation water and other infrastructure for agriculture and wind power.
“No sane developer would spend four years secretly buying land and suing local landowners,” he said. “They spend four years working with local community stakeholders to develop a proposal that is good for the community and the country.”
The developer has now been confirmed to be Sramek. Early in his career he was named a “Rising Star” by Financial News, a UK publication covering finance and banking. At 22, he was a trader at Goldman Sachs.Sramek is reportedly the youngest person on the list according to Report then.
Sramek co-authored Book is called Towards excellence, hailed as “a concise, approachable handbook on how to get more done.” In his book, first published in 2009, he described growing up in a one-bedroom house in a village of 1,000 people in Moravia, Czech Republic, according to a New York Magazine profile. intelligence officer.
Sramek, an Olympian handball player, turned down offers from several hedge funds to become an emerging-markets trader at Goldman Sachs. report in 2009.
After five years of founding and running a startup in San Francisco, Sramek worked briefly at a payment provider stripe There he worked on “special projects” as an external accountant, according to Visit eFinancialCareers.com.
exist Towards excellenceSlamek wrote that he would send a quote from Ayn Rand to his “younger self”: “The question is not who will let me do it; the question will be who will let me do it.” Who will stop me ? “
Residents of Solano County may have his answer.
— With assistance from Jason Leopold, Joel Rosenblatt, Peter Blumberg, and Biz Carson
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