Kathy Threlfall and her husband moved 42 years ago to a 240-acre ranch in Solano County, California, that was originally owned by her great-grandparents. Now 75, she still lives in the 150-year-old house on the property. She stayed after her husband died, even after she retired from farming a few years ago. Her daughter got married at the ranch, under an arch that Threlfall’s grandmother added in the 1930s; her son, who lives in Los Angeles, comes to visit for weeks at a time.
“I have a grandson who is 5 years old, and this is his favorite place in the world,” Threlfall says. On the ranch, 60 miles northeast of San Francisco and nestled in a county that’s less than a thousand square miles, she says she feels a sense of communion with the past. “I’m with my uncle who I fed cows with,” she says. “I’m with my grandma who I gathered eggs with.”
So when a group of anonymous investors calling themselves Flannery Associates approached Threlfall about five years ago with an offer to buy the land, she said no. And when they came back last year offering $4.5 million, more than twice as much, she said no again. It was life-changing money, but “there was no way I was going to do business with an entity I didn’t know,” she says.
In late August, The New York Times revealed that Flannery Associates represented a group of Silicon Valley billionaires that includes VC giant Marc Andreessen, Stripe cofounders Patrick and John Collison, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs. Operating under the parent company California Forever, they’ve spent more than $800 million buying up over 50,000 acres in Solano County. Frustrated by the slow pace of housing development in existing cities, these Silicon Valley leviathans plan to create a new one from scratch over the coming decades. “We’re looking to build a middle-class community,” says California Forever founder and CEO Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader.
The group targeted Solano, one of the poorest counties in the region, because of its proximity to the Bay Area and the belief that locals would be swayed by the promise of more resources. “We can’t think of a better site or a better location,” Sramek says. The California Forever website promises “good paying local jobs,” new employers, and better schools thanks to more tax dollars. The group hasn’t yet indicated exactly how big the city will be or where it will be placed, but Sramek envisions medium-density neighborhoods made up of two- to six-story row houses occupied by single families or divided into apartments. “You can have schools that kids can walk to alone. You can have grocery stores. You can have restaurants within walking distance,” he says, with housing that “a middle-class family can afford.” Threlfall and many of her remaining neighbors, however, have deep concerns about what that would do to the agricultural community and economy—and some are paying a steep price for holding out.
In May, Flannery Associates filed a federal lawsuit against more than three dozen entities, including local ranches and individuals in the area, many of whom refused to sell, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by seeking to “conspire, collude, price fix, and illegally overcharge Flannery” and forming “a secret conspiracy to drive up prices” because they spoke to one another about holding out for higher offers. The lawsuit is seeking at least $510 million in damages.
“The persistence and the pressure that they have brought to bear on some of my neighbors is heartbreaking,” says Threlfall, who wasn’t named in the lawsuit. “Families have been besieged.” As land has been passed down generation to generation, it has often become co-owned by multiple family members; when Flannery approached individuals with sky-high prices, it kicked up intense conflict. “It has literally torn families apart,” says Lisa Shipley, executive director of the Solano County Farm Bureau. People who don’t want to sell have had to hire lawyers to protect themselves. Al Medvitz, a farmer in the county, says he has put a lawyer on retainer, draining his limited resources.
Accused of colluding, families who have known each other and worked together for generations are afraid to call or text. Even so, many are determined to stay. The tech billionaires behind California Forever “don’t seem to understand the idea that money is not our main motivator. Other things are more important to us,” Threlfall says. “I think that’s just out of their range of understanding.”
Many of the people in the area farm land that goes back generations. Medvitz’s property was settled in the late 1800s by his wife Jeannie McCormack’s grandfather, who lost a hand in a harvesting accident. It’s “someplace on the land,” McCormack says. But when she tried to explain this to the person making her the offer, “He looked at me like I was crazy.”
Solano’s farms are responsible for livestock, grains, nuts, and produce worth more than $390 million annually in gross sales. Among California counties, it’s a leading producer of Sudangrass hay, which is used for livestock, and the third biggest source of sheep and lamb. Medvitz and McCormack raise winter crops such as wheat and barley. In the spring, they plant safflower, and sheep and cattle graze the land; in summer, they grow alfalfa. They also have a 50-acre vineyard. “For the farmers out here, it’s not about making a lot of money. It’s a vocation,” Medvitz says. “We’re helping to feed the world.”
Sramek argues that California Forever has focused on buying what the state deems “grazing” rather than “prime” land, adding that its agricultural potential “is limited by the quality of it.” But Medvitz says that even heavy clay soil is well suited to the kind of crops he and his wife plant. What’s more, many locals have adopted a dryland farming technique, which relies on rainfall and mostly forgoes irrigation, given how limited water is in the area. The land, in other words, may not look as lush as that of other counties, but it’s nonetheless quite productive.
But making such farming economically viable typically requires large plots. Farmers in the area frequently lease land from one another, which also helps them rotate between growing crops and grazing livestock. “They’ve always communicated on who’s growing what and how they can get better results as a community,” says Shipley, the county’s farm bureau director. This cooperation is now in jeopardy.
Sramek claims that California Forever won’t reduce agricultural production as it builds its city. It’ll compensate for lost farming land, he says, by building greenhouses. He also says that the group “hasn’t taken any land out of agricultural production whatsoever” and is continuing to lease it to local farmers.
But that hasn’t been the experience of Ian and Margaret Anderson, who’ve owned a farm in the area for generations. They say that leasing their neighbors’ plots is crucial to raising their livestock and growing their wheat. Before California Forever’s purchases, they produced enough wheat to make 16,000 loaves of bread daily. But they need a big swath of land to cover the costs of buying and running large equipment. And they need access to it over the long term: It takes 18 or more months to see a harvest.
Four years ago, through Flannery Associates, California Forever began buying parcels that the Andersons lease. At first, they were able to negotiate a five-year lease for one plot. But after they refused to sell their own land, they say that the leases for other parcels got shorter, until Flannery consolidated everything into one agreement. The couple was forced to pay up front for a yearlong lease that could be terminated at any time. In early 2023, it was terminated, and they were notified that they could no longer lease any of Flannery Associates’ properties. They’ve lost access to roughly 60% of the land they once farmed; nearly all of it now lies unused.
“Our farm is kind of falling apart because of what’s going on,” Ian says. They’ve had to sell off livestock to downsize. Margaret calls it “despicable.”
They won’t be the only ones to suffer, though. Farms like theirs are intertwined with many other businesses. A number of Solano County ranchers produce humanely raised meat for Niman Ranch, which sells to grocery stores across the country. Larger operations rely on Solano crops to feed their livestock. The area’s use of dryland farming techniques, meanwhile, helps maintain Solano’s scarce water resources. And the unpaved land helps absorb rainwater and prevent flooding at a time of increasingly intense rainstorms.
The area is also home to migrating birds and wind farms; turbines dot many of the parcels that California Forever now owns. The fate of all this land is now up in the air as residents wait to learn more about California Forever’s plans.
Solano residents who oppose California Forever’s land grab are often sympathetic to the Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis. “We’re not NIMBYs that are saying, ‘Don’t develop here.’ We’re saying, ‘Please come develop in our cities,’” says Duane Kromm, a former member of the Solano County Board of Supervisors and a member of a county group that opposes development of the region’s rural areas. But California Forever seems more intent on creating a brand-new city than helping to develop the area’s existing ones. (Sramek claims that some of California Forever’s backers are investing in other cities, although at least one, Andreessen, has been a vocal opponent of affordable housing development in his own neighborhood.)
The group will nevertheless have a hard time building this new city. Solano County’s Proposition A, first passed in 1984 and most recently renewed in 2008, limits development on any land deemed agricultural or open space without a popular vote to rezone it. And Solano residents have long resisted such development. The original Proposition A was a response to two communities planned for rural areas—including one that mirrors California Forever’s plans. In the early 1980s, an investor hatched a proposal to build a new town called Manzanita. Its backers brought the issue to voters only to suffer a “big lopsided” loss, Kromm says. The town was never built. When a separate developer wanted to do something similar near the city of Fairfield, it was met with a lawsuit that resulted in a cap on the number of homes that could be built, with the rest of the land put aside for conservation, according to Kromm. Later, a plot of land that yet another developer bought with dreams of houses and a golf course was instead turned into a park.
California Forever has assured residents that it wants to take community feedback into account before it moves forward with any development, but the group is nevertheless planning to put a request to change the zoning restriction onto the 2024 ballot. Kromm believes that means they’re crafting the language for the proposal before Solano residents have fully weighed in. Sramek says that their feedback is being integrated “in real time.”
“The California Forever plan is so imaginary, such a fantasy, that I can’t believe that even they believe it,” Threlfall says. “When you’re a master of the universe, you think you’re capable of anything.” But even if they aren’t capable of it—even if these Silicon Valley billionaires can’t get the foundation laid for their city on a hill—the once tight-knit agricultural community of Solano will be left dealing with the fallout.
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