2y ago

A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has purchased tens of thousands of acres of land for more than $800 million to build a new city near San Francisco

www.businessinsider.com

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2y ago

A company backed by SV has purchased 52,000 acres to build a new city

www.businessinsider.com /flannery-silicon-valley-billionaires-build-new-california-city-solano-county-2023-8

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2y ago

A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has purchased tens of thousands of acres of land for more than $800 million to build a new city near San Francisco

www.businessinsider.com /flannery-silicon-valley-billionaires-build-new-california-city-solano-county-2023-8

27 comments

There's literally nothing about this that's described as a mystery...? It's stating all the facts...
- We solved the mystery!
- Probably meant to say mysterious rather than mystery
They won't have to pay as much for employees to rent an apartment from their company than they would for their employees to rent a San Francisco apartment.
- It also means that people who quit immediately lose their home. This is great for employee retention.
- Yeah, and the absolute worst thing is they'll be swarmed with applicants. A job and guaranteed housing I can afford? Guaranteed to be able to afford food and lunch etc? Deals on partnered electronics? I'm even willing to bet they'll allow remote work when you live there. To the average person it looks like a great deal. It makes life simple.
  But when you want to switch jobs to boost your salary you're faced with having to move and finding a new place to live in the bay area isn't easy. Then the issue of leaving the town meaning leaving friends, changing schools if you have kids and everything that entails. Not to mention if your partner also works there. There will be a lot of people effectively stuck. That feeling of not having a choice, of being stuck is really insidious.
  And with depressed wages, which won't impact them much while they work since they get housing and stuff cheaper. But come retirement the life time of lower earnings will rear its ugly head.
  
  Bro company towns worked super well for the people the last time it was tried, what are you talking about?
  /s
- Except for that initial $800 million, plus the billions it will cost for infrastructure.
  
  They will try to get that financed by VC or regular finance and skim something off the top of everything that's happening in the city.
  Even if the libertarian nightmare fails, they still have a developed city near SF.
  
  That will get passed on to a local municipality, just like building sprawling suburbs
Sounds like the plot from a James Bond book...
Modern day coal towns.
- Fordlandia for the Web 3.0. Show your corporate NFTs at the gate.
This is already the plot of Parable of the Shower by Octavia E Butler. It does not end well.
- Kinda sounds like Night City from the Cyberpunk games too. These guys read the science fiction and miss the point entirely.
- A Sin City 😮
  
  New Amsterdam
a new city, or like, some kind of dystopic conclave for the super-wealthy?
So a property development company is developing a property. What's the mystery?
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has been snatching up land in a northern California county in an apparent bid to build an entirely new city in the state.
The company, Flannery Associates, has spent $800 million to purchase thousands of acres of farmland in Solano County, which sits northeast of San Francisco, court documents obtained by Insider show.
Flannery's backers include Andreessen, Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others, according to the report.
In 2017, Flannery Associates pitched an idea to turn the Solano County land into a walkable city powered by clean energy and housing tens of thousands of residents, The Times reported.
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed in July, the landowners said that they have "either engaged in good-faith, arms-length transactions for the sale of land, or were not tempted by Flannery's prices, because they had no desire (or ability) to sell."
In 2016, Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, began looking into how it could build a city that could address California's affordable housing crisis.
Saved 66% of original text. :::
- Good bot but there is a big concern
  The Wall Street Journal reported that Flannery has purchased about 52,000 acres of farmland around Travis Air Force Base since 2018. According to the report, government officials began investigating the purchases due to concerns that foreign interests may be behind the company.
  "So the entire base is encircled now," Catherine Moy, mayor of Fairfield, told ABC 7 News. "So there's no part that isn't touched by Flannery."
  Little is known about Flannery Associates or its specific city plans.
  
  If I were to create a city that can withstand the downfall of society, I would want to put a defensive military fortress at its center. Right now, they don’t run it, but when the shit hits the fan, they can inherit an arsenal of protection.
- Bad bot.
  It seems the spoiler annotation is not working (for me, on liftoff, on android). But also, there's no need to wrap it in spiller tags to begin with.
  I'm looking forward to changing my vote on you. 😍
I mean, they are a bit late to the party covering this, but o.k. It's been in major news outlets here for years. Anytime that land get snapped up people take notice. Including eyes at Travis, which they didn't even get into in the article. Between the litigation around purchase costs, regulations which are in place already to protect the interests and security of Travis, to the general development regulations of the state, they are in for a rude awakening if they believe in any pipe dreams on the site. They likely won't happen as they think they might anyway.... There is enough red tape in California real estate development alone to wrap the planet. The only "company" that so far has managed to come even close to building "new city" type agreements has been Google - the only ones who, for obvious reasons, have not even batted an eye at coughing up to date $1B in land investment around the Bay Area with it's vision for mixed use space within existing city limits in Mountain View and San Jose, and support of more housing development.
Sounds exciting, would love to work there and see this all grow and help develop it.
Seems cheap, in BC 800million might get you 800 regular sized lots, going to be a tiny village

27 comments