PivotCalifornia Forever CEO Explains Plans to Build a New Community | Pivot
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Silicon Valley-Backed Plan Aims to Build Walkable City in Solano
- California Forever CEO Jan Sramek explains his plan to build a new, dense, walkable community on 62,000 acres in Solano County as a response to California’s housing crisis and growing inequality in the Bay Area.
- He argues the project follows historic precedents of privately initiated cities, focuses on traditional urbanism (street grids, mixed uses, starter homes), and explicitly rejects libertarian “network state” or smart-city experiments.
- The conversation addresses skepticism about billionaire investors’ motives, questions around governance, secrecy in land acquisition, and lawsuits with local landowners, as well as the project’s potential economic benefits for Solano County and nearby Travis Air Force Base.
- Sramek frames the effort as a long-term, for-profit but mission-driven investment meant to expand opportunity for working families and young people priced out of desirable walkable neighborhoods.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasBuilding new walkable communities can directly address housing affordability.
By designing a dense, mixed-use city with row houses, small apartments, and starter homes, California Forever aims to produce units that are “affordable by design,” targeting starting prices around $400,000—below current new-build norms in Solano County.
Focusing on traditional urban design may be more viable than “smart city” experiments.
Sramek explicitly rejects high-tech governance or smart-city models, arguing that a simple, well-laid street grid and organic growth—mirroring neighborhoods like Noe Valley or the West Village—creates more resilient, beloved places.
Permitting reform is central to enabling large-scale housing production.
The project’s main governance “innovation” is faster permitting: a comprehensive environmental impact review for the whole community, then a 60‑day timeline for projects that conform to the plan, aiming to avoid the multi-year delays typical in cities like San Francisco.
Large, contiguous land control enables smarter planning and buffers.
Acquiring 62,000 acres quietly (via standard practice of masking the buyer’s identity) allowed California Forever to plan a cohesive layout and, for example, double the security buffer around the nearby Air Force base—something impossible with dozens of uncoordinated landowners.
Investor alignment on social outcomes can shape project priorities.
Though explicitly for-profit, Sramek says investors like Laurene Powell Jobs, Reid Hoffman, and others consistently push on issues such as teacher and nurse affordability, walkability, food access, sustainability, and broad opportunity—not just financial returns.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesWe run out of houses, we should find some land that is not prime farmland, that is not sensitive ecological habitat, and build a complete community there.
— Jan Sramek
I have zero interest in floating cities, network states, and smart cities. From that perspective, we’re really, really boring.
— Jan Sramek
If all we did over the next 30 or 40 years was build something that people looked at in 50 years the way they look at Noe Valley or the West Village, I would be over the moon.
— Jan Sramek
Young people have been held out from the American dream of buying a home.
— Scott Galloway
Whatever it is that we’re doing, California is no longer working for working families.
— Jan Sramek
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