Takeaways from ‘California Forever’ founder

Jan Sramek, founder and CEO of California Forever, defended the controversial, secretive effort to buy over 55,000 acres of land in hopes of creating a new urban center. More than $800 million in land purchases alarmed elected officials and residents, particularly due to their proximity to Travis Air Force Base.

With financial backing from Silicon Valley tech billionaires including Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs, Sramek is now in the midst of a public campaign to win support from skeptics and concerned stakeholders. Here are five takeaways from the former Goldman Sachs trader and Czech Republic native’s remarks, from the timing of the project to whether public money will be needed.

The interview included Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy and Chronicle reporter J.K. Dineen.

A detailed proposal is planned by the end of the year or January

“We take the listening tour and the learning from the community over the next four months very, very seriously. And so we don’t want to put forward any plans until we’ve had a chance to reflect everyone’s feedback in those plans,” Sramek said.

“What we hear in Solano County is, it’s a county that’s become a bedroom community. It’s a county that hasn’t received its fair share of major employers. It hasn’t received its fair share of tax dollars… Many people feel that they’ve been left out,” he said. “We hope that our projects can be a catalyst to bring more investment, bring more tax dollars to Solano County”

A November 2024 ballot measure to allow urban development is planned and would need to be approved by Solano County voters for the project to move forward.

Public money and partnership will be needed

“I would say that the improvements that would benefit solely our community would be financed the way that developers are financing them everywhere else. And so that would be Mello-Roos and other financing districts,” Sramek said, referring to programs where property taxes and related bonds go to fund infrastructure work.

“When it comes to improvements that benefit the larger North Bay communities such as (improving or moving) highway (State Route) 12, we would pay, as we said, our fair share of it, and we hope that our project can be a catalyst to make that happen,” he said. “I think that great projects like this are built in partnerships with government, and so that’s part of it.”

Though the project is described as a city, Sramek said that there would be no rush to incorporate and governance could be handled by the county.

“This could remain in unincorporated Solano County for a long time,” he said. “We think government is fine as it is in Solano County. The county does a great job of running the county … And then at some point, it would be a decision of the voters in this new community whether they want to incorporate.”

Why Sramek wants the city to be retro

“We think that there’s so much wisdom in how we builtd cities and towns over the last hundreds of thousands of years in some places. And so from the beginning, we’ve believed that you go back to go forward,” he said.

“The plans that people put forward will be very inspired by those great old American neighborhoods that someone who was born 100 years ago will recognize. And so I think we are very different than many of the attempts to build new cities by people who’ve been wooed by the vision of some star architects to build the city of tomorrow. We want to build a city of yesterday,” he said.

“We do believe that one of the dominant types of housing in the new city should be row houses. We think that row houses are some of the most underappreciated types of types of buildings,” he said. “You can have small construction firms build them. They can be built much more cheaply. They can be single-family row houses where you have a yard.”