The governor said Silicon Valley investors’ plans to build a city have been too secretive and that it has harmed his faith in the California Forever project.
, has revered Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire and right-wing extremist. “I’m as curious as everyone else,” Newsom said Tuesday, adding that “the project is obviously interesting in terms of its scale and its scope.
” But the secrecy is another aspect of the plan that has garnered interest. A website for the project acknowledges as much. “California Forever is the parent company of Flannery Associates. Over the last few years, Flannery has purchased over 50,000 acres in Solano County,” . “To date, our company has been quiet about our activities. This has, understandably, created interest, concern, and speculation.”“Instead of watching our kids leave,” the site says, “we have the opportunity to build a new community that attracts new employers, creates good paying local jobs, builds homes in walkable neighborhoods, leads in environment stewardship, and fuels a growing tax base to serve the county at large.”So, basically, it sounds like a city — but one more explicitly owned by rich investors than others.I’m imagining San Francisco, but with a few more bike lanes, a little more open space and many more haughty elites.“I’ll be candid with you,” he said at Tuesday’s forum. “They started a little behind in my book because of the fact that they let so much intrigue and so many questions so there’s a lot more doubt now and a lot less trust.”, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte explained some of the biggest hurdles to the city becoming reality: There are dozens of obstacles before the dream city can ever be built: The land is zoned for agriculture, not housing; the area has no reliable water supply; the area is full of wind power turbines, some of them 300 feet tall; there are slow-growth laws in Solano County; there is local opposition. The problems go on and on, a land-use nightmare. Let’s keep watch of this development proposal as it … develops. It may ultimately be quashed, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily useless. I happen to think it’s rather helpful in distilling Silicon Valley elitism and hubris into one cute and colorful website.
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