California Forever CEO Explains Plans to Build a New Community | Pivot

Jan Sramek is the CEO and founder of California Forever. His company, with the help of some Silicon Valley billionaires, has acquired 62,000 acres in Solano County, California, which is north of, north and slightly east of San Francisco over the last few years with the goal of building a new community. So, we've wanted to have you on for while. We have so many questions. K- Scott particularly has a lot of questions. But there's been a lot of mystery around California Forever. I, I need you to explain exactly what you're planning and, uh, I, and I get a sense of why it was secret at the beginning is you were buying up all, 62,000 acres in this area north-east of San- just north-east of San Francisco, um, centered in, uh, you know, in Solano County. Um, so talk a little bit about what you're doing for people who don't know.

We are trying to get California to build again, uh, and solve this problem that we have, um... It's still the center of innovation, it's still this economic engine for the whole country, but it's the first time in the history of the country where people are moving out of a place like that. Um, and we're doing that by building a new community in Solano County, about an hour north of San Francisco. Uh, and in some sense, this should be the, um... This is the oldest kind of business model, um, in the world. We run out of houses, we should find some land, um, that is not prime farmland, that is not sensitive ecological habitat, and build a complete community there. And then I think what's different is we're not building a subdivision, we're building a complete community. And so we're building something that someone who grew up in an old neighborhood like Noe Valley or the Marina built a hundred years ago would recognize. A complete community with homes and apartments and schools and shops and jobs and churches, um, and, uh, we believe that this can be a really unique economic engine for Solano County, which is a part of the Bay Area that has been left out of the prosperity that, that's happened here o- over the last 20 years.

So, most cities just happen, you k- you know, they just sort of occur w- and then the, and then cities build on top of cities, right? That's the whole concept is, like, Rome has 10 different versions of itself depending on the era. Creating something out of nothing, a lot of cities that do this i- in the history have not worked out well. Brazilia, I was thinking lots of different things have, they've been trying to create the perfect city. Why did you, besides California needs more housing which, uh, obviously is, is a big deal, um, why do you think it'll work by just creating it out of nothing where people weren't naturally going to build themselves or settle themselves?