Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was until late last month, when the group sort of out of nowhere pooled the ballot measure set to go before voters this November to approve their plan. But make no mistake, we’re going to be hearing about this plan again pretty soon.
Jan Sramek: I do think it’s going to be a vote on the future of Solano County, but it is also going to be a referendum on California more broadly.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: California forever CEO, Jan Sramek says he’s going to spend the next two years trying to get more people on board with the East L.A. plan before bringing it again before voters. Today, why California forever changed course?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I remember the moment that I heard the news.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Adhiti Bandlamudi is a housing reporter for KQED.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I was actually working on a story about their housing portion of the plan. I had all my interviews ready. I was preparing for the Board of Supervisors meeting the next day where the board was going to formally place it on the ballot. And then I remember seeing the news in the morning and it was a complete shock.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: You have been spending months really reporting on the East L.A. plan, reporting on California forever. And it seemed like they were just sort of plowing forward with this idea. But then they make this announcement. I mean, what was their rationale at the time for just dropping the idea so suddenly?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: We now know, based on campaign finance records, that they spent $9 million to get this on the ballot when they gave their explanation as to why they were making the sudden change. They said that there were two things that they kept hearing from Solano voters. They wanted to see an environmental impact report and a development agreement.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: The environmental impact report would have basically laid out how the new city would impact the vernal pools and the Jepson prairie. These like very important habitats that are in that area. And it would have also laid out important things like how the new city would get its water.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: The development agreement is sort of like a report which would show how the county would hold the company accountable, basically for making good on the many promises that were tacked on to this plan, including bringing 15,000 good paying jobs to the county, things like that.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: Based on their timeline, they were anyway going to spend the next two years working on those reports. So they said they would basically flip the timeline a bit, release the environmental impact report and the development agreement over the next two years, and then have the voters decide the fate of the new city in 2026.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That is what California forever was saying in July when they announced that they were dropping this ballot measure. But you actually spent the last couple of weeks reporting to really understand what was going on behind the scenes a little bit more, how they sort of went from going full speed ahead on this idea to this sort of screeching halt. First, how did you go about trying to answer this question of why California forever suddenly dropped this idea from the ballot?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I was not satisfied with the company’s initial answer that it was just because people were calling for these reports because arguably people had been calling for these reports for months. So I called a few people who had worked with the campaign who agreed to speak off the record and include their perspective in my story, but only anonymously.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: And then I spoke to people on the record to sort of see if they agreed or if those if those sentiments were similar. And then I posed questions to California forever to sort of like get their reaction to those comments. And what I learned is that the story goes way deeper.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah. What did you would you find?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: Right in the beginning, I think they started off on the wrong foot. You know, I talked to so many people about the project and the thing that kept coming up is that they bought the land in secret since 2017.
News cast: The group only revealed this summer that they are, in fact, a collection of Silicon Valley billionaires looking to build a new city. They call the project California Forever.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I mean, we didn’t even know who was buying up the land until The New York Times broke the story in August of last year. I think it just rubbed people the wrong way. And I even talked to people at California forever who agreed that the land purchase was not a great look, though it might have made business sense to, like, purchase it in secret.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: It strikes me that it’s been a year since we actually found out who was behind former Lee Flannery Associates. What we now know is California forever. Did they go too fast here?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: That’s a big part of the problem.
Jan Sramek: I mean, I think we went we went a little bit too quickly.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: When I spoke with Jan Sramek:, he was basically saying that by putting it on this aggressive timeline of going to November and not really having a lot of time to talk to people and build those really important relationships, it not only made the project incredibly politicized, so much so that people didn’t want to be associated with it.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: And he said that that really hindered the company’s ability to talk with people. And I think in speaking with county officials and just like people in general, they felt like the timeline was incredibly aggressive and it made it difficult to kind of include other perspectives in that eventual vision.
Jan Sramek: We didn’t fully appreciate the extent to which putting this on the ballot would make it harder for people to work with us locally. And so we excited to kind of improve that dramatically.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I know you also heard from some people about the culture of the campaign, especially CEO John Shrum. Six inner circle. What can you tell us about that?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I had also heard from some people who had worked on the campaign who agreed to sort of speak with me anonymously, that the company had this sort of like. White male bro culture that ultimately affected how they were able to, you know, kind of like interact and connect with the the very diverse community that is Solano County.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: Many of them are, you know, people who came from bigger cities who want to sort of like build this dense urbanist vision for a new city. Solano County especially. And I even found this amongst the like. Supporters of the project are very diverse, like especially young families of color. So many people of color like love this project.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: And I got I heard so much support from them, but I didn’t necessarily see, you know, those people involved in like the leadership positions. I did talk to someone who worked with the campaign who basically said, you know, many of the decisions were sort of made by this like group of like white men.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: And it was difficult to include other perspectives necessarily in those like, big decisions. I opposed this to California forever. Too young trying to ask, like what he has to say to this criticism. And he did agree that, you know, the company can do better.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: He pointed to the like community advisory committee that is very diverse and filled with Solano residents. But it’s not necessarily clear to me how much power those individuals really had in shaping what the town would be.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Coming up, who California forever needs to win over to build their new city.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So what has this combination of moving too fast and also not getting enough people at the table meant for public opinion among people in Solano County when it comes to California Forever’s grand idea?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: They didn’t have enough support from local elected officials. They just like could not get anyone to sign on to this plan. When you’re developing housing or building a city from scratch, it ultimately requires county approval.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: Even if California forever won the November election, let’s just say that they got all the votes they needed, they would still need county approval to build the roads and the underlying infrastructure for the city.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: If they wanted to use public funding to finance some of the roads and you know that highway expansion they were promising of expanding highways 12 and 113 they would need county approval to do that. And it’s way harder to get those approvals if the elected officials in charge don’t trust you or like the project that you’re working on.
Mitch Mashburn: So I still am not in favor of the project as proposed in the initiative.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I spoke with Supervisor Mitch Mashburn. He’s the chair of the Board of Supervisors in Solano, and he was saying that he doesn’t like the project the way that it stands.
Mitch Mashburn: Based on empirical data. Show us how this is a plan to do no harm, how it’s planned to truly help and not hinder or hurt in our county.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: He will need to see significant changes in order to sign off on it and, you know, really get behind what California forever wants to build.
Mitch Mashburn: It was the best possibility for the residents of our county moving forward to have a chance to get a true understanding of what the impacts of this project would be.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, what is your sense of public opinion at this point?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: This topic is really divisive. There are people that either love it or hate it. And I think a large group of people are still trying to figure out how they feel about it, especially since there are a lot of questions that are remaining. I’ve spoken to a number of groups, including like Artists Against Billionaires, Solano Together.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: Both organizations say they’re going to keep on urging the company to answer some of these questions and hold the company accountable. I also heard from people who are sort of keeping an open mind about the project, who in the meantime want to see the company investing moneys into the city is that exist almost as a way of showing goodwill that they genuinely care about the county?
Anthony Summers: As a pastor, many of my congregants who wanted to buy a home for the first time have had to move to Sacramento, and then the choice of them commuting back to Vallejo to be a part of that.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: I was talking to Anthony Summers. He’s a pastor in Vallejo, and he said that he wants to see investment in his local community and also how the company can be held accountable for all these promises that they’re, you know, saying that they’re going to bring to this new city.
Anthony Summers: I believe it’s a it’s a fresh idea. Right. And a chance to revitalize this area. You know, and so, again, from Vallejo growing up, you know, we just have to make sure that the partnership is such that people are afforded the opportunities that are being talked about and hold the the founders of the company accountable.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What does this decision authority to drop the ballot measure actually mean? Like, how do you think this changes things? Now.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: This project is not dead. They have a lot of work ahead of them. First off, they say that they’re going to get their environmental impact report and development agreement done in two years. Those things usually take like two decades for a project of this size to complete.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: So if they can get all those reports done in two years, that alone will be a feat. They’ll also need to make up a lot of ground amongst people who still do not trust them. Definitely more conversations with locals. They’ll need more officials on board with their plan who will be willing to work with them.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Probably more schmoozing going on. Do you think we’re going to see more billboards?
Adhiti Bandlamudi: We definitely might see more billboards. We might see more schmoozing. But I will say, I think the billboards were, you know, focused around this like, ballot initiative, like coming to the voters in November. And now it’s more of a soft skill that the company is going to have to flex a bit. For sure.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: There’s going to have to be more like earnest conversations with people who live, you know, in Rio Vista and in Sassoon, like kind of close to the new city, but also just people who they’re going to need votes from in 2026.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: In California. For better or for worse, we have passed a myriad of legislation to kind of make sure that developers take into consideration the environment, what people want, how water is going to get there, how many people will live there, how affordable it’ll be. And California forever ran into that. They ultimately needed community support and they will need it in order to pass this thing in two years or whenever they bring it back to the voters.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Adhiti, thank you so much.
Adhiti Bandlamudi: Thanks for having me.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: On Friday afternoon, TechCrunch reported that the family of Marc Andresen, one of the billionaire investors behind California forever, is preparing to build a separate development of more than a thousand homes in Vacaville. The subdivision would be ten miles away from the proposed California Forever project. It will still need city approval.
