RIO VISTA — Solano County residents have pulled out their camping chairs to watch the dogs round up the sheep. It’s raining and foggy, but there was no way they were going to miss the contest hosted by Jeanne McCormack and her husband Al Medvitz at their ranch during the a weekend last spring.
Showcasing the best sheepdog is a nearly century-old tradition on these vast, rolling pastures topped with wind turbines north of the Sacramento River, just an hour’s drive from San Francisco.
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But this year, the event was more than just a celebration of canine talent: It’s about defending the way of life, in the most rural of the nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, against the Silicon Valley’s onslaught. All ticket money was destined for a charity founded in the fall to help local farmers pay legal fees from the lawsuits filed by Flannery Associates.
Over the past seven years, the mysterious company has spent $900 million buying up 140 properties at prices three to four times higher than the market price. In total, Flannery has acquired 25,000 hectares, or nearly 10% of the county’s total area, becoming its largest landowner. But even that is not enough for the company: last year, it sued a dozen farmers who refused to sell their land, accusing them of price-fixing.
Rumors of Chinese or Russian espionage
Until a year ago, no one knew who Flannery was or what its intentions were. “When its lawyer and real estate agent invited us to lunch in 2019, they told us it was a group of American families who just wanted to invest their money,” say Al Medvitz and Jeanne McCormack. Emotionally attached to the property, where Jeanne’s Scottish family settled in the second half of the 19th century, the octogenarian couple turned down their -million offer.
But many neighbors decided to sign. As the number of buyouts increased, the wildest rumors began to circulate. The area is close to the Travis Air Force Base: nicknamed the “gateway to the Pacific,” it is one of the most important on the West Coast. “That started to arouse suspicions that the buyers were Chinese or Russian — that maybe they were spies,” says the former professor, unfolding a map on the kitchen table of his charming country house. Especially since, at the same time, buyouts in other U.S. states were raising a few eyebrows.
We are wasting the biggest opportunity in the history of humanity.
A New York Times investigation in August 2023 revealed the truth, which turned out to be much more mundane: Flannery is actually funded by some of the biggest fortunes in Silicon Valley. Among them, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs; Reid Hoffman, the co-creator of LinkedIn; Marc Andreessen, who set up the well-known Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, and the Collison brothers, who launched the fintech Stripe in San Francisco.
A European-style city of 400,000 inhabitants
The goal? To build a new city of 400,000 inhabitants (almost double the county’s current population!) on a plot of land equivalent to two-thirds of the surface area of San Francisco. It won’t be yet another residential suburb, nor a smart city or a futuristic megalopolis with skyscrapers, promised Jan Sramek, Flannery’s CEO, but a European-style city that will become “the most pedestrian in the United States,” with row houses of three to four stories. Their prices, roughly half that in San Francisco or Palo Alto, should allow middle classes to become homeowners.
Born in a Czech village, Jan Sramek is a former financial whiz kid. After his studies at the London School of Economics, the son of a teacher and a mechanic was recruited as a trader by Goldman Sachs. He then moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where he created two start-ups that didn’t meet the expected success. In 2014, Sramek, an admirer of libertarians Ayn Rand and Peter Thiel, moved to San Francisco and discovered the sky-high prices of apartments.
He then made mass housing construction his new focus. “The whole world is trying to build its own version of Silicon valley, which itself is threatened because it can’t build more accommodations. We are wasting the biggest opportunity in the history of humanity,” Sramek believes, referring to the brain drain to Texas or Florida.
Fishing in the California Delta
According to a McKinsey report, California is suffering from a shortage of 3.5 million accommodations. But obtaining a building permit in cities has transformed into a bonafide obstacle course as authorities request in-depth studies on the projects’ environmental consequences and appeals against permits have become commonplace. There’s also the lack of public transport, which raises concerns over the increase of traffic jams.
Jan Sramek’s conclusion was that it was easier to start his project from scratch, far from the big cities. During a fishing trip in the California Delta, the 30-year-old discovered pastures without houses or shops for miles and miles. Maybe not as beautiful as the Pacific coast, with its majestic oaks and fragrant eucalyptus trees, but the area’s topography had a major advantage: the seismic risk is low, so is the fire hazard as the region is sparsely wooded. Despite the proximity of the delta, the land is above the estimated sea level rise for 2150.
The area’s residents are famous for their NIMBYism, short for “Not In My Backyard.”
Thus, only one major hurdle remains: the county’s residents. “People move here because they like the small-town feel, the fact that it’s far from everything, that you see cows when you drive on the highway. So they’re really nervous about a mass influx of people,” said Ronald Kott, Rio Vista’s mayor, in the city council chambers.
Like in Joan Didion’s books
Rio Vista, which is located closest to the new project, lies only 100 km from San Francisco, but the atmosphere there is more like the small towns described in Joan Didion’s books, a far cry from the tech capital city. Its claim to fame? The visit, celebrated by a commemorative plaque, of Humphrey — a whale that got lost in the Sacramento River back in 1985.
With a mere 11,000 inhabitants, the town boasts no supermarket or fast food outlet. Instead, a few restaurants line up its main street — the most famous being Foster’s Bighorn, which serves moose burgers to customers surrounded by an impressive collection of hunting trophies, including lions, zebras and even an elephant. Legend has it that Bill Foster, the bootlegger who opened the establishment in 1933, refused to sell his 300 stuffed animals to Walt Disney and Howard Hughes.
The spirit hasn’t really changed. The area’s residents are famous for their NIMBYism, short for “Not In My Backyard” —which refers to the opposition or resistance by residents to developments in their communities. In 1984, real estate developer Hiram Woo paid the price. To block its proposed city of 5,000 called Manzanita, Solano County inhabitants voted to ban the pouring of new concrete areas outside of the seven existing town limits (Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun City, Vacaville and Vallejo). The ruling can only be lifted by a vote of more than 50% of the citizens in a referendum.
Less profitable crops like wheat, barley and safflower
Flannery’s CEO Jan Sramek says protecting the farmland around Rio Vista makes no sense: “They have the worst soil in a 100-mile radius.” It is true that orchards, almond groves and vineyards are mostly located in the northern part of the county, which benefits from canals that deliver water from Lake Berryessa. But these hills here rely only on rainwater. Less profitable, more drought-tolerant crops are grown in rotation with pastures: wheat, barley and safflower, a plant with orange flowers that is used to make oil.
The model is becoming less and less sustainable. The market for wool and sheepskin has shrunk fivefold since the late 1960s. Gas wells discovered on farmland in the 1930s are slowly drying up, and wind turbines aren’t generating the same amount of money. “We’re more of a dormitory town than a farming community now. The last factory in town closed in the 1980s,” says Peter Hamilton, the 60-year-old who chairs the local history museum, which displays old farm machinery.
Residents fear the impact on the wetlands that define the county.
Rio Vista has become a haven for retirees, with a growing number of gated communities. Among the working residents, two thirds have jobs outside the county and spend two to three hours a day in their cars. Sramek has focused his campaign on these issues, promising to create 15,000 new jobs. In May, the CEO announced the names of a dozen companies — from drone maker Zipline to fintech Brex — that are reportedly eager to set up shop in the new city.
Protect the “lepidurus packardi”
But it’s not enough to convince the residents, who also fear the impact on the wetlands that define the county and that are disappearing in the rest of California. Among them is Jepson Prairie, one of the last examples of vernal pools in the state. These temporary ponds, which form on clay and alkaline soils, generate a beautiful patchwork of purple and bright yellow flowers in the spring. They are also home to astonishing creatures, now endangered, that around thirty enthusiasts came to admire this Saturday.
Everybody is wowed by the Lepidurus packardi, an orange tadpole that looks like a horseshoe crab and that is named after Hewlett-Packard’s co-founder who made several donations.
But the day’s main highlight is to be found in the test tube of volunteer Kate Mawdsley: the California tiger salamander, a black amphibian with white spots. Its larvae have to spend about 100 days in the pond before they are mature enough to make their way to burrows on land.
A single two-lane highway
Another issue is the traffic jams caused by a growing population. North of the land Flannery bought, one can still see vestiges of the railway tracks. A train used to stop here on its way from Oakland to Sacramento. Since it closed in 1941, there has been no public transportation in the area. Rio Vista is crossed only by a two-lane highway, which runs over a lift bridge connecting the town to Berkeley and Oakland. “When the bridge goes up to let the boats go through, it causes traffic jams for miles,” its mayor says.
Sramek’s use of the “divide and conquer” motto generated lasting hostility.
Jan Sramek has guaranteed that Flannery would contribute to the highway renovation. This is one of the many promises that the company has made in recent months, including spending 0 million to help county residents buy housing in the new city, as well as million in scholarships and the construction of a solar farm, a sports complex and a water park with a turquoise blue lagoon.
Divide and conquer
But not enough, at least so far, to restore trust with the locals. What didn’t help was Jan Sramek’s refusal to apologize for operating undercover for seven years, which drew parallels with the method used by Walt Disney to build his Florida theme park.
More importantly, his use of the “divide and conquer” motto generated lasting hostility. Since the landowners were often LLCs made up of about 20 members of the same family, Flannery sought to seduce those no longer living in the area to try and buy out their shares. The wolf, then, was among the sheep, suing the other members who refused the company’s offers for financial mismanagement.
After spending millions of dollars on campaigning, Flannery’s CEO managed to collect enough signatures to put his proposal to a referendum in November — roughly at the same time as the U.S. presidential election. But in July, Sramek announced that he was postponing the vote for two years, to work on an environmental impact report and a development plan in partnership with the county authorities.
The decision came a few days after the latter published a report warning of the risk of a large deficit for the county and the need for a tax increase to build the necessary infrastructure — something that would have significantly impacted Sramek’s chances of winning in November.
“This new process will not affect the schedule and may even accelerate it,” Flannery’s CEO told the Los Angeles Times, while ominously hinting at what his plan B would be: building 4,000 housing units in Rio Vista itself. Thanks to the land he managed to buy from a farmer, the company has gotten a hold of some 200 hectares in the city. And to build on it, this time, he won’t need to go through a referendum.
