VALLEJO, Calif. (KRON) – The founders of “California Forever” are asking for community input on a new city they plan to build in southeastern Solano County. The investment group held its first of six town halls Wednesday in Vallejo.
The founder started with a presentation explaining the project. The idea is to transform more than 50,000 acres of farmland near Travis Air Force Base into a city with tens of thousands of new homes, parks and a solar energy farm.
But at the town hall, people got impatient, yelled out questions and pushed back on the idea.
“I’m sick of developers coming in, and we don’t know nothing, and then you say it’s not a secret but you haven’t consulted us,” one attendee said.
Angry and frustrated neighbors sounded off Wednesday night as the development project took its first step toward making a vision into a reality.
“Still feeling skeptical about a lot that he had to talk about. In fact, I may be more skeptical now than I was walking into it,” said attendee Phillip Balbuena.
The California Forever website mentions how this will be a new community for good-paying jobs, solar farms, open space, affordable housing, safe walkable neighborhoods and good schools. Founder Jan Sramek says there are many supporters of the project — they’re just less vocal.
“The average person in Solano County is very excited about the project,” Sramek said. “They just don’t want to be ambushed by a group like this.”
Many people have questions about if there really will be enough jobs, if the housing will be affordable, and if there will be enough water to support the homes.
“I think that this could be a potential drain on resources for Solano County,” said county resident Anne Carr. “I think it’s incredible that someone from Silicon Valley would come up here with this novel idea of what we should do, why not do that in Silicon Valley?”
Paula Conley says she feels the $900 million spent on this project could be better utilized by investing in the cities they already have.
“We have great, great towns, but they’ve come into disrepair over the years. So what we need is capital investment to help regenerate that,” she said.
These town halls are just introducing the vision for the project. They won’t have an actual plan for the project until early 2024, after the town halls have been completed.
