As they attempt to win over hearts and minds to their plan to build a new city in eastern Solano County, the group California Forever has just pledged to bolster healthcare access in the county.
We knew that California Forever was going to have an uphill climb convincing voters and political leaders that it will do more good than harm to build a new city of up to 400,000 people in Solano County. And some of the biggest concerns like highway infrastructure and water resources are likely also going to be the most expensive to solve.
The group, and its enthusiastic CEO Jan Sramek, have just branched out into another realm in an apparent effort to curry favor with voters. In the neighboring town of Rio Vista, which California Forever's unnamed new city will butt up against, the group is facilitating the opening of a new health clinic. Rio Vista has been without a healthcare facility for over a decade now, and California Forever has stepped in, purchased a building, and will lease it to Solano County-based NorthBay Health.
As Sramek announced Monday, per the SF Business Times, California Forever is pledging to help open five to nine more new healthcare clinics in the county — an effort that does nothing to help the new city get built except, you know, it's clearly good for PR.
In addition to the 52,000 acres of farmland that the cabal of billionaires has already purchased, it seems they quietly purchased a 7,200-square-foot building at 327 Main Street in Rio Vista sometime recently, and NorthBay Health intends to open a clinic there by next year, under a long-term lease agreement.
"To me, this clinic is a prime example of what's possible with the right capital and the right partnerships," Sramek tells the Business Times.
Sramek and NorthBay Health CEO Mark Behl held a ceremonial "groundbreaking" outside the building in Rio Vista Monday, which appeared to already have NorthBay Health signage on its windows. This was of course just symbolic, as the building already exists, and they were just shoveling dirt in a planter outside.
"By opening multiple clinics across Solano County, we are making a long-term investment in the health and well-being of our communities,” Sramek said in a statement. "This initiative will not only provide vital healthcare services, but also stimulate local economies, create jobs, and help bring vibrancy to Solano’s downtowns, ensuring a brighter future for everyone."
This is only the beginning of a PR and advertising blitz that is likely to appear on the billboards and television screens of Solano County in the coming months.
California Forever has a lot riding on a single ballot initiative, which is cleverly packaged as the East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy Initiative and the East Solano Plan — the main website for the project has changed its URL to eastsolanoplan.com. Voters will be asked whether they want to alter the county's General Plan and carve out an exception to a 40-year-old growth ordinance, which stipulates that all new development must occur within the city limits of the existing cities of Vacaville, Vallejo, Dixon, Fairfield, Suisun City, Benicia, and Rio Vista.
The initiative qualified for the ballot with just 13,500 signatures. But Sramek and his billionaire backers will need to argue against county and city leaders, as well as environmental groups like the Solano Land Trust, which earlier this month came out in opposition to the project.
"The area of land covertly purchased by California Forever is larger than the cities of Fairfield and Vallejo combined," the Trust said in a statement. "The [East Solano] Plan would drastically increase the current population of Solano County. After careful consideration, we reached the informed conclusion that a development of this magnitude will have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland, and natural environment."
Also, as of April, California Forever's imagined new town was not polling well.
Sramek and his team have released only AI-generated-looking renderings so far that show idyllic, tree-lined streetscapes and European-style neighborhood piazzas. There have been vague promises about creating jobs and luring industry to the area, but these remain just vague promises with no commitments from any industries to speak of.
And the only semi-local example we have a new town being built out of whole cloth is Mountain House in San Joaquin County, which received its approvals in the early 1990s and has only in the last decade had a critical mass of residents. New jobs and commercial tenants were part of the plan there as well, but much of the commercial space in Mountain House either remains vacant or unbuilt.
Mountain House's first grocery store, a Safeway, opened in 2022, nearly 30 years after planning for the town began.
California Forever's plan only came to light about nine months ago, when a New York Times investigation revealed that the billionaires behind an ongoing land-grab in Solano County were venture capitalists Michael Moritz and Marc Andreeson, along with Laureen Powell Jobs, LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, and others.
