Ranchers decry ‘arrogant’ Silicon Valley billionaires buying up land for ‘fantasy’ city near San Francisco: ‘We are now totally surrounded’

 

Silicon Valley tech elites have their reasons for wanting to build a new city near San Francisco. For starters, they’re fed up with the crime, drug markets, and homeless encampments—not to mention the sky-high housing costs and flight of companies from downtown.

With that in mind, a group of them have spent nearly $1 billion buying up land in Solano County, about 60 miles outside San Francisco. Their idea is to build a utopian city with new homes, orchards, a solar-energy farm, and plenty of parks and open space. 

Less thrilled about the idea are Jeanne McCormack and Al Medvitz, owners of the 125-year-old, 3,700-acre McCormack Ranch, which is now surrounded—aside from a stretch facing the Sacramento River—by property bought for the planned city. McCormack is baffled by the project and its billionaire backers.

“We have new issues because we have to deal with neighbors who have no experience or expertise in agriculture,” said McCormack, whose ranch includes wheat, alfalfa, grape vineyards and more 1,800 sheep.

“Many of the farmers in the area lease foraging land from each other,” former West Sacramento mayor Christopher Cabaldon told the paper. “Flannery has canceled many of these foraging leases.”...more