By Kate Wolffe and Yue Stella Yu, CalMatters
California Forever, the tech billionaire-backed group that hopes to build a city from scratch on farmland in the outer San Francisco Bay Area, is lobbying state leaders to fast-track a massive shipbuilding deal that would kick-start its development after years of local opposition.
The billionaires behind the project are seeking a deal to expedite environmental reviews of the development and, if necessary, bypass county restrictions on building by being absorbed into Suisun City boundaries. They’ve hired former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg — Democratic architects of landmark environmental laws — to make their case, and are using the prospect of luring a major shipbuilder to California to accelerate the dealmaking.
California Forever has pursued its project for nearly a decade, though the vision has shifted: At first pitched as a walkable city with cottages, bike lanes and even a water park, the plan then added a major shipbuilding operation and, last summer, a significant manufacturing hub.
California Forever’s proponents, led by the state’s powerful building trades union along with realtors, peace officers and pro-housing groups, argue the latest proposal would boost the state’s economy and bring an estimated half a million jobs to California. And now, a prospective tenant has emerged: Defense company Saronic Technologies, Inc., which builds autonomous vessels for use in national security, is deciding between California and Texas for its next factory. The state must fast-track the development or lose the deal, supporters argue.
The developers are seeking the state’s permission to use an 18-year-old environmental impact report for the shipyard development, limit any legal challenges to the project to 270 days, and allow Suisun City to annex their land if needed, according to Steinberg and Hertzberg.
“In short, if legislation is not approved, California will lose billions of dollars in investments and tens of thousands of jobs this summer to Texas and other states,” proponents wrote in a joint letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders this week.
But some locals and lawmakers are skeptical, arguing that details about the project remain scarce. The proposed development would convert vast farmlands into factories and risk harming the surrounding ecosystem, they said, which deserves rigorous environmental review under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act that proponents are seeking to expedite.
“For a project this scale in this location, it is what the (law) was designed for,” said Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Napa Democrat who represents the area. “A central question for the people of Solano County is: Is this going to be for the community or is this a conversion project that leaves them behind?”
Opponents also slammed California Forever for pursuing relief behind closed doors with state leaders and circumventing local opposition. Since 2018, the group has secretly bought up agricultural land, shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to court local residents and spent at least $330,000 lobbying the governor and legislative leaders for favorable legislation.
“I think they know that the only way this actually happens is under cover of darkness, by trying to essentially get the governor to work this plan for them,” said Jordan Grimes, legislative director at Greenbelt Alliance, which has advocated for streamlined environmental reviews for housing projects.
Secretive beginnings foment distrust
For residents of Solano County, an agricultural community on the outskirts of the Bay Area that includes coastal areas next to a deep-water shipping lane, the suspicion around California Forever has been hard to shake.
The group’s subsidiary, Flannery Associates, started buying up farmland in 2018, eventually acquiring 62,000 acres while routinely refusing to answer questions about its backers. Some farmers later alleged the company used strong-arm tactics to get them to sell.
In 2023, Flannery’s backers were unmasked as a group of wealthy venture capitalists including the founders of LinkedIn and Netscape, all led by former Goldman Sachs trader and real estate developer Jan Sramek. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, holds investments in both California Forever and Saronic, the defense company eyeing California. Andreessen’s firm did not immediately return a CalMatters inquiry for comment.
Despite rocky beginnings, California Forever needed the majority of Solano County voters on its side due to a 1984 “orderly growth” law that requires voters to approve development on unincorporated land.
In 2024, the company debuted the East Solano Plan to rezone 17,500 acres of agricultural land for a dense, 400,000-person city. The proposal was set to go before voters that year, but its backers pulled it following powerful grassroots opposition, poor polling and a county assessment that found holes in the plan. Sramek acknowledged the group likely moved too fast and said the initiative would go back before voters in 2026.
Instead, the group has pivoted. The East Solano Plan has become the Suisun Expansion Plan and the Solano Shipyard. In January 2025, Suisun City’s city council directed its manager to explore expanding the city’s limits through annexation, which is now underway, although it could take years.
“The annexation and the ship building have been a clear way to work around the need for voter support in Solano County,” said Nate Huntington, a member of the grassroots group Solano Together, which formed in response to the secretive land purchases. Huntington pointed out that California Forever hasn’t even submitted a proposal for a shipbuilding facility to the county.
“All of this has been happening in backrooms of Sacramento, and it’s not been publicly available.”
Seeking state environmental relief
California Forever is now selling the development to the state as a major incentive to lure manufacturers and shipbuilders to California — and the subsequent need for housing to accommodate the promised jobs.
The company wants the governor and state lawmakers to cut red tape for the development and require enough housing for the new jobs. Steinberg and Hertzberg told CalMatters they are contemplating legislation to that end, but only after California Forever signs a lease with a manufacturer or shipbuilder.
Their plan would allow the governor to designate construction on company land as “environmental leadership development projects,” which would effectively require any litigation to be resolved within 270 days. Steinberg authored the state law streamlining that process in 2013.
State law requires government agencies to prepare a report for any project that might have a significant impact on the environment. Instead of assessing the impact of the proposed shipyard, Steinberg and Hertzberg’s proposal would use a 2008 report, which designated the area where the shipyard would go as “water-dependent industrial usage.” Most of California Forever’s 7,500-acre planned footprint does not have that designation.
Steinberg told CalMatters the report is sufficient since the site has changed little.
“The state and county need the ability to say yes now to these numerous opportunities,” he said in a text. A new report, he said, “would require years of additional delay and lost opportunities.”
But the report is outdated, Cabaldon argues.
“This is completely different,” he said. “Just the notion that you would just say, ‘We are not going to do any assessments at all and we’ll just rely on this old one’ — that is not consistent with what the public interest is.”
Steinberg and Hertzberg also want the state to require enough housing in the area, but to allow surrounding cities and Solano County to permit local housing developers to build first.
But if local governments aren’t willing to or cannot build enough housing within the timeline the manufacturer or the shipbuilder wants, Steinberg and Hertzberg’s proposal would allow Suisun City to annex adjacent California Forever-owned county land into its city boundaries — a controversial idea that has drawn fierce local opposition. The move would be a “last resort,” Steinberg and Hertzberg stressed repeatedly.
The annexation would effectively bypass the county’s orderly growth initiative, which requires voters to have a say in development.
“The shipbuilders and manufacturers need certainty on a much faster timeline,” Steinberg said.
Cabaldon said the pitch to build new housing to accommodate theoretical jobs is “fantastical,” noting that Saronic, the proposed ship-builder, is a leader in automation.
“There’s no indication that this is going to generate on an ongoing basis that many jobs, and certainly not more jobs than we have housing for even today without building a single additional unit,” he said.
Historic union agreement prompts support
In January, California Forever announced it had signed a 40-year deal with the Napa/Solano Building Trades Council and Northern California Carpenters Union to use union labor to build its development. The agreement was an important political alliance for CEO Sramek, bringing more influential advocates to the table.
According to Digital Democracy, both the Building Trades Council and the Carpenters Union have given roughly $10 million in direct donations to legislative candidates since 2000.
Those advocates made themselves heard over the past few weeks, following a Texas county court approving significant tax incentives to lure Saronic to Brownsville. In a statement, Saronic said its nationwide search is still “active and ongoing.”
The California Alliance For Jobs, an alliance of influential construction companies and workers, drafted two letters in quick succession calling for legislative leaders to streamline the California Forever expansion and shipyard.
“We champed at the bit to go all in to get this project moving, and to get legislation through Sacramento this session,” said Joshua Arce, executive director of the alliance.
Suisun City Councilmember Princess Washington, who has consistently been the sole vote on the council against the annexation plan, said she feels organized labor is being used as “political pressure” to win approval.
“Processes are slow, but they’re done that way through government to ensure that it’s being done correctly, that all parties of interest are being treated fairly, and there’s checks and balances,” Washington said.
“It’s unheard of for a project to be done as quickly as they want it to be done.”
In a statement, California Forever spokesperson Jim Wunderman said any shipyard project will comply with all California environmental and land use laws. He said county supervisors already approved using the 2008 impact report, and that legislation would allow the group to “meet prospective employers’ timelines.”
He said by pursuing expansion within Suisun City, California Forever is following the community’s preferences by channeling new growth into existing cities.
An ongoing presence in the Capitol
Since 2024, California Forever has spent at least $330,000 lobbying the Legislature and governor’s office on bills and other actions, according to campaign finance records.
Steinberg and Hertzberg told CalMatters they were hired in April as “special counsel,” not lobbyists, meaning they are spending less than a third of their time talking with public officials.
Grimes, who said he respects Steinberg for leading landmark environmental land use reforms in the Legislature, said he’s disappointed in his advocacy for California Forever, “a project that is antithetical to all of this.”
California Forever reported spending $90,000 lobbying the governor’s office and the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, GO-Biz, last year on “federal shipbuilding activities and California business attraction and retention activities.”
“GO-Biz has discussed relevant state incentive programs with Saronic and explained how they operate,” said GO-Biz spokesperson Willie Rudman. He said the agency does not offer incentive packages to specific companies.
Last fall though, GO-Biz helped organize a bid for Saronic to settle in Solano County. County staff reported during a board meeting that GO-Biz supported a legislative effort to override the county’s “orderly growth” law.
County supervisors rushed through a proposal to change the boundaries of the Solano Shipyard to comply, but with just days remaining before the end of the legislative session, Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat from Suisun City, said there wasn’t time to introduce legislation.
Since then, Wilson said, the proposal has been on the table, but “nothing’s been requested” of her office by California Forever.
The company also urged lawmakers to act fast or risk losing the shipbuilder to Texas last year — a negotiating tactic common in economic development, Cabaldon said.
But Cabaldon argued that Saronic will decide where to place its shipyard based on “defense needs of the United States of America” instead of state incentives.
“We have to negotiate with our eyes open.”
For the record: This story was corrected to reflect that Joshua Arce is executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs. It was also updated to add that GO-Biz says it does not offer incentive packages to specific companies.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
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This project requires a county-wide vote. Polling showed it would lose 70/30. So they are trying desperately to circumvent that vote. They’re trying to annex to Suisun City, paying lavishly to try and stack the Board of Supervisors in their favor, and now attempting to ge the state to pre-empt the county vote requirement. They’re fundamentally dishonest and will do anything to keep their project moving forward.
^^^What Don said^^^
This proposal is based on a speculative manufacturing plant. We don’t know if this company has sufficient stability and prospects to justify the rapid response. This is much like the rush for data centers, many of which will not be built. The company is venue shopping to gain the most financial benefits. Next they’ll be asking for tax breaks. These deals rarely work out well for the local government.
Well if it can be screwed up Democrats will find a way.
Democratic party/governor corruption. There’s really no other way to describe this.
“Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Chronicle about the talks, but the billionaire-backed California Forever project has hired two longtime Newsom allies, which appears to signal that the group is serious about seeking legislation to help circumvent local opposition and curtail CEQA opposition.”
(Kind of reminds me of Dan Carson and Rochelle Swanson, advocating for/working on behalf of local development proposals.)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-forever-solano-county-newsom-22319525.php
This is a proposal that would have negative impacts on the entire region.
“California ForeNEVER” has a Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/775318240797761
Though it won’t make any difference, there’s no way I’m supporting Newsom for president. I’ve seen enough from him already.
And frankly, some environmental groups (including the Greenbelt Alliance) have become too cozy with YIMBYs.
Where were they regarding the destruction of Lagoon Valley, not to mention all of the other continuing sprawl throughout the state?
To be clear, California YIMBY supports this proposal. Those are the type of people that the voters of this state have allowed to infiltrate the Democratic party.
As a result, you now have the state government working against residents and the natural environment. Congratulations, though truth be told – the choices are made before the mainstream candidates’ names even appear on a ballot.
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/06/20/statewide-yimby-group-endorses-california-forever/
At least someone like Trump doesn’t pretend to care about the environment.
Yes, the California YIMBY support didn’t make much sense – it didn’t track for YIMBYs to support a massive greenfield project like this. Also, when the Bay Area Council essentially became a front group for California Forever – it didn’t make much sense. It didn’t make sense until, California Forever hired Jim Wunderman who was affiliated with both groups. https://californiaforever.com/california-forever-welcomes-jim-wunderman-as-head-of-public-affairs/
All of this “legislation” consists of backroom deals – there IS currently no published proposed legislation. The word is that Go-Biz is threatening to push this through as a rider to the budget bill – like they did for the weakening of CEQA on the last budget bill. Otherwise it could be inserted into an existing bill I suppose. There has been no debate and no public input.
In a recent meeting the Rio Vista City Council suggested that the California Forever special legislation would exclude the entire “Suisun Expansion Plan” from environmental review. (This disclosure follows a typical pattern – the public often learns about what secretive Suisun City is up to from transparent Rio Vista). In their most recent meeting, Rio Vista stated that lobbyists were working in Sacramento to exempt 19,000 acres of the nearly 23,000 acre Suisun City annexation proposal from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act. The specificity of the proposal – the number of acres, the location of the exemption, and the exclusion of the area right next to Travis Air Force Base, gave credibility to the truth of their intelligence about this the back-room deal. So let that soak in – a Minneapolis / Oakland/ Tulsa/ Bakersfield sized city exempted from CEQA merely because the proponents were billionaire. .
Other reports suggest that this last minute legislation would change the law regarding annexation and would remove or change the authority for Solano County or the Local Agency Formation Commission to make decisions about the proposed annexation. For the “shipbuilding” in Collinsville (it’s really boat building – the area will never be deep enough for ships), they tried in September to (and apparently plan to) waive a magic wand and declare that the very general EIR issued in 2008 for the County General Plan will fulfill CEQA. Remember, this area is the most sensitive part of the Delta – there is credible evidence that development would trigger salt water intrusion what would threaten the water supply of half of the state. Also, Rio Vista has suggested that this will be one big data center – the CEQA “reform” last year prevents local governments from stopping it.
Again, another rumor suggests that there will be no legislation taken through the normal process – that these provisions will be snuck in by the Governor’s Office as a rider to the budget bill. The Governor’s Office used this mechanism to weaken environmental laws in a major way last year. And again they explicitly threatened the County with a similar action in September 2025.