The huge ‘California Forever’ project is on hold because, in Solano County, voters matter | Opinion
In Sacramento County, it would take only four people — a super-majority of supervisors — to approve some new community in the middle of nowhere. In Solano County, it would take about 100,00 people to say yes, because, for decades, voters have controlled growth outside city boundaries themselves.
The political math of Solano development appears to have caught up with some Silicon Valley investors who had been secretly planning for years to build a city roughly the size of Sacramento in the open hills in a barren southeastern portion of the county. Backers of the so-called California Forever plan have withdrawn their expansion initiative from the November ballot.
“Ultimately, they ran into their own, their own hubris,” said Christopher Cabaldon, a candidate for state senate to represent the very county that has heard an earful about the project. Solano voters are simply balking at big outside money looking to alter the county’s destiny.
“So when you get to that point, no matter how much money you spend, you can’t overcome that,” he said. “You’re just reinforcing what people already think.”
Solano and Sacramento Counties could not be any different when it comes to growth management. In Sacramento County, about 40% of the population does not live in a city. In Solano, it’s closer to 4%. It explains why there is actual farmland still in production along the interstate between communities like Dixon and Vacaville. Land speculators with campaign contributions can’t build a satellite subdivision by persuading three Solano supervisors.
Solano’s city-centric growth heritage dates back to its 1980 general plan, which voters affirmed via initiative in 1984. In one form or another ever since, there has been a green light for cities to expand and a great big hurdle for new growth in the unincorporated county. That can only happen if voters go along.
With such a high hurdle to build a new city in basically the middle of nowhere, it is befuddling why the monied backers of California Forever chose orderly Solano County to gobble up land rather than some valley locale with a far more Wild West political mentality. But invest they did, buying up about 50,000 acres of ranch land with spectacular urban ambitions in mind.
The sales pitch was pretty dazzling: up to 87,000 new jobs, beach-like crystalline lagoons, a sports complex and 50,000 residents by 2040. The strategy was nothing short of Shock and Awe, the American military’s stated goal in its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
But locals were neither shocked nor awed. Poll after poll found tepid support. Conspicuously missing was any full-blown environmental analysis. And basic questions about pesky issues like water and transportation went unanswered.
“It wasn’t fully baked,” Cabaldon said. “They were hoping on a wing and a prayer they could get the fundamental authorization.”
The withdrawal of the initiative does not mean that California Forever is California Never. The backers can always try again. Next time, they could try to avoid county voters by creating this massive new community as part of an expansion city. But that poses a whole different set of political challenges.
It is quite possible, however, that these investors simply bet big and bet wrong. The era that every developer’s dream can become a reality, if it ever existed, is most certainly over. The Sacramento region has far more speculative projects on the fringes of communities, and leapfrog developments, than actual demand.
California Forever is not manifest destiny. Solano County actually has its planning act together, far better than most. Cabaldon, for one, thinks an entirely different sales pitch is in order if the proposal is ever to surface again.
“Their message was, basically, ‘This is a wasteland, Solano County is a failure and it’s never going to get any better,’” Cabaldon said. “It’s not a durable strategy for civic engagement in our place.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.