California Forever is a venture to build a city for 400,000 people on rural land due north of Silicon Valley. The East Solano Plan to build the speculative city was first unveiled in 2023. The project was delayed last July when taxpayers and politicians vocalized opposition to its financing methods using public subsidies.
Jan Sramek, founder and CEO of California Forever, has since come back to the drawing board. At this month’s Reindustrialize summit in Detroit, Sramek announced plans to build a 2,100-acre, 40-million-square-foot advanced manufacturing park on site, dubbed Solano Foundry, to be leased by JLL.
As previously reported by AN, urban design for East Solano is by SITELAB Urban Studio, a San Francisco office. CMG is the landscape architect, and Fehr & Peers is responsible for transportation planning.
New aerial renderings show Solano Foundry pushed up against the edge of East Solano’s urban fabric inspired by Ebenezer Howard, Daniel Burnham, and Leon Krier. Thanks to a planned direct freight‑rail connection to the Union Pacific line, East Solano’s industrial zones would have access to manufacturing centers in Fremont, Reno, and Tracy.
Leveraging the site’s proximity to major national security assets, there’s a proposal for a planned Solano Shipyard seven miles south of the city in Collinsville. There could also be collaboration between Solano Foundry and the Travis Airforce Base, located five miles northeast.
At Solano Shipyard, components produced in the Solano Foundry can be used to make autonomous and conventional maritime vessels, supposedly “creating a virtuous cycle of demand for precision parts and skilled labor.”
The Bay Area’s housing crisis and international trade agreements have long pushed manufacturing jobs outside of California—the Solano Foundry is a vision to bring these blue-collar jobs back to the region, California Forever shared.
But not everyone is enthused: Solano Together is a coalition made up of local residents who oppose the project. The group issued a statement in response to the shipbuilding proposal in May.
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