Mystery buyers of $1b of undeveloped land near California military base revealed to be tech titans Laurene Powell Jobs and Linkedin co-found Reid Hoffman – and NOT nefarious network of Chinese spies

It has emerged that the mysterious buyers of $1 billion vacant land near the California military base are tech titans — not a nefarious network of Chinese spies, as some feared.

Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs and Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman have been named as the secretive buyers, who went “Flannery Associates” and bought more than 50,000 acres of land surrounding the Travis Air Force since 2018.

They are now the largest landowners in Solano County, about 90 miles northeast of San Francisco, raising concerns that a foreign entity was behind the purchases.

The group reportedly plans to turn their investment into their vision of an ideal city that would be designed for pedestrians powered by renewable energy, The New York Time reports.

Brian Brokaw, a spokesperson for Flannery, told the paper that the investors are “Californians who believe Solano County and California’s best days are ahead.”

He added that the group plans to begin working with Solano County residents, elected officials and Travis Air Force Base next week.

Former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek, 36, is believed to be the leader of the group. He is said to have courted the tech industry’s biggest names to join his plan for an ideal city.

Venture capitalist Marc Horowitz, Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, former Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz, and entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross are also some of the owners.

It’s not clear how much each investor contributed to the Flannery fund.

In a 2017 letter to investors obtained by the NYT, Moritz said that “this effort should alleviate some of the pressures we all feel in Silicon Valley: rising house prices, homelessness, congestion, etc.”

“We are proud to be collaborating on a project that aims to provide high-paying jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, open space and a healthy environment to residents of Solano County,” they told Wall Street. Journal.

“We’re excited to be working with residents and elected officials, as well as Travis Air Force Base, to make that happen.”

For years, the group has been making offers to landowners in the area that are many times the market price, regardless of whether their land is for sale or not.

The purchases worried many, who raised the alarm about a mysterious entity rapidly acquiring American land.

The US Air Force opened an investigation into the group, but after eight months of investigation, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Office was unable to identify a single person behind the Flannery, according to the Journal.

The US Department of Agriculture had conducted its own investigation, also without results.

State Democratic Representative John Garamendi, one of the voices who had spoken about the mystery buyers, now says he has heard of them.

“This is their first ever attempt to speak to any of the local representatives, including myself,” he told the NYT on Friday.

Travis Air Force Base, northeast of San Francisco, is a strategically important base that serves as a “gateway” to the Pacific Ocean. It houses large transport aircraft used for refueling smaller aircraft and shipping aid and ammunition around the world.

While the group hopes to build a city in the area, the land is not designated for residential use and the development process in California is particularly difficult. In order for the city to be built, the residents of Solano County will likely have to vote on it.

Flannery has sued local farming families for $510 million, accusing them of “acting in blatant disregard of federal and state law” by conspiring to raise the value of the land it sold them.

In its first complaint, Flannery claimed it has “smoking gun” evidence, including text messages and emails between sellers showing they illegally colluded to sell the farmland at a “substantial premium over fair market values”. ‘.

Meanwhile, officials confirmed earlier this month that residents of the 120,000-resident city of Fairfield had received a survey from a polling website via text message, while others said they had received phone calls.

The research is extensive and appears to offer a first glimpse of what Flannery Associates plans to do with the land in the Bay Area.

It presents a vision for a new city with a ‘student city feel’, consisting of new schools, housing and restaurants, and an emphasis on green transport.

According to the poll, the idea could be bolstered next year by a vote in Solano County, according to SFGate, which received screenshots of the poll.

“This project includes a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy park, orchards with more than a million new trees and more than ten thousand hectares of new parks and open space,” the study explains.

It then presents a list of proposals for financing and operating the new city, asking Solano County residents to choose which would convince them to support the plans.

Their options range from “much more likely” to support the new city, to “no impact on support.”

Proposals include giving priority to the local population and assistance with buying or leasing homes, and replacing the current aqueduct with a modernized version.

Other proposals included that the city construction be funded entirely by private sector money while being led by “a group of architects and planners interested in building livable and sustainable communities – not the typical developers.”