Since 2017, a shadowy Silicon Valley company has bought up 52,000 acres of farmland around Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, Calif., totaling about $800 million.
Flannery Associates is a company run by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader. Beyond that, nothing much is known of the company except that some of the most famous names in Silicon Valley have invested in a project being promoted by Flannery. Some backers include Marc Andreessen, Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others, according to the report.
The entire Air Force base is now encircled by land owned by Flannery. This caught the attention of the Department of Defense, who have since been investigating. According to the New York Times, in 2017, Flannery was trying to sell an idea to build an entire city — walkable and green. Its proximity to San Francisco suggests that the new city would be an escape hatch for those who are finding San Francisco unlivable. But others aren’t so sure.
“We don’t know who Flannery is, and their extensive purchases do not make sense to anybody in the area,” said Rep. John Garamendi, (D., Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel. “The fact that they’re buying land purposefully right up to the fence at Travis raises significant questions.”
But the Wall Street Journal is now saying Flannery Associates is going to build that city.
“We are proud to partner on a project that aims to deliver good-paying jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, open space and a healthy environment to residents of Solano County,” Brian Brokaw, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement. “We are excited to start working with residents and elected officials, as well as with Travis Air Force Base, on making that happen.”
The revelation that Flannery’s backers include many well-known American tech titans and the group’s first public comments on how it plans to develop the land it has acquired provide some answers to the residents, local and federal officials, and the region’s congressional delegation. The questions surrounding Flannery’s purchases had fueled concerns of foreign ownership and prompted federal probes, the Journal has reported.
The Air Force has been investigating the identity of Flannery’s backers for months, and Reps. John Garamendi and Mike Thompson, Democrats who represent the area, called for a national-security panel known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to investigate the land deals.
Rep. Garamendi said in an interview Friday that he still had many questions about Flannery’s intentions toward Travis Air Force Base. “There’s just a whole host of questions about their megacity,” he said. “What are you guys doing with Travis? What are your intentions here?”
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There’s a long way to go to make the “megacity” a reality. There are zoning issues that need to go to a vote, and there may already be some resentment building among the locals who don’t much like the idea of interlopers coming into their county uninvited.
“Flannery Associates has developed a very bad reputation in Solano County through their total secrecy and mistreatment of generational family farmers,” Rep. Garamendi said in a statement.
Not everyone is on board with this plan. But $800 million should go a long way in convincing people that a mega-city outside San Francisco is a fine idea.
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