Voters to weigh in on whether tech billionaires can build new California city | Silicon Valley

Voters in northern California will get to weigh in on whether a contentious plan backed by Silicon Valley billionaires to build a new city north of San Francisco can go ahead.

California Forever, the company behind the initiative to build a green city for up to 400,000 people in California farmland, submitted well over the 13,000 valid signatures required to put it on the 5 November ballot, elections officials said on Tuesday.

Solano county’s registrar of voters said in a statement that the office verified a sufficient sampling of signatures.

The registrar is scheduled to present the results of the count to the county board of supervisors in two weeks, at which point the board can order an impact assessment report.

Voters will be asked to allow urban development on a 27 sq-mile (70 sq kilometres) plot of land between Travis air force base and the Sacramento River Delta city of Rio Vista that is currently zoned for agriculture. That land-use change is necessary to build the homes, jobs and walkable downtown proposed by California Forever.

California Forever’s plan is a contentious one.

The company is headed by Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader and has the backing of wealthy investors such as the philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

They envision a new city with walkable neighborhoods, climate-friendly infrastructure, green energy jobs and affordable homes. “I think cities are perhaps humanity’s greatest inventions,” Gabriel Metcalf, the urban planner hired to design the new city, told the Guardian earlier this year, adding he hoped the plan could play a part in solving California’s crushing housing crisis.

But the way the company has gone about it has outraged many locals. For years, California Forever quietly purchased $800m in farmland in the rural county, suing farmers who refused to sell.

Also opposed to the plan are conservation groups, and some local and federal officials who say the plan is a speculative money grab rooted in secrecy.

The Solano Land Trust, which protects open lands, said last week that such large-scale development “will have a detrimental impact on Solano county’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland and natural environment”.

In past months, California Forever has tried to convince local residents of its good intentions. It has proposed an initial $400m to help residents buy homes in the community, as well as an initial guarantee of 15,000 local jobs paying a salary of at least $88,000 a year.

Sramek disclosed that the company has spent $2m campaigning for the project in the first quarter of 2024. He expects the amount spent to be higher in the second quarter, he told the Associated Press.