The household of powerhouse enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen, one of many traders behind the hoped-for California Eternally utopian metropolis in Solano County, California, is planning a considerable neighborhood improvement within the space, TechCrunch has realized.
Andreessen is married to Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, whose Silicon Valley actual property mogul father purchased land in Solano County a long time earlier than his demise in 2022, in response to county information obtained by TechCrunch. An LLC operated by Arrillaga-Andreessen’s brother that’s often known as A&P Kids Investments, has begun the planning course of for a mixed-use improvement with greater than 1,000 houses.
This space is on the sting of the town of Vacaville, 10 miles away from the proposed California Eternally improvement, in response to property information, planning paperwork, and enterprise registry info seen by TechCrunch. A consultant for A&P mentioned at a neighborhood assembly in March that A&P plans to finally promote the property for the good thing about Arrillaga-Andreessen and her brother, John Arrillaga Jr.
Andreessen, Arrillaga-Andreessen and Arrillaga Jr. didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Two different parcels of land owned by the LLC that aren’t a part of the proposed Vacaville improvement are even nearer to California Eternally. This land — roughly 600 acres — is throughout the freeway and down a number of miles from the place California Eternally hopes to construct its photo voltaic farm.
All informed, the Arrillaga household co-owns at the very least these three parcels totaling round 730 acres within the space. These had been initially purchased by their billionaire actual property developer father, John Arrillaga Sr., and his enterprise accomplice, Richard Peery, in 1985, information present. The sale of any of the properties would probably additionally profit Peery’s kids, as he’s listed as a co-director of A&P in state paperwork. A spokesperson for Peery Arrillaga, the true property firm based by the 2 males, declined to remark.
California Eternally is a proposed master-planned neighborhood, to be carved from over 60,000 acres of land that a number of members of Silicon Valley’s elite have quietly been shopping for in Solano County since 2017. Traders on this land embody Andreessen, in addition to Mike Moritz, Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs, who’ve collectively sunk practically $1 billion in pursuit of 1 aim: to construct a brand new utopian metropolis freed from the ills that plague locations like San Francisco, in response to the New York Occasions.
The challenge leaders of California Eternally didn’t know of Andreessen’s spouse and brother-in-law’s connection to A&P Kids Investments after they started land acquisitions in 2017 and “never made an offer” on the LLC’s land, a spokesperson says.
“We were not aware that the Arrillaga and Peery families owned any land in Solano County until about two years ago, when we were already five years into the project,” the spokesperson mentioned, including that there was “nothing dramatic” about how the challenge came upon. “We were looking at who owned parcels near ours and saw A&P. We looked up A&P and saw it was owned by the Arrillaga and Peery families.”
Erin Morris, Vacaville’s neighborhood improvement director overseeing the East of Leisure City Highway Particular Plan, which incorporates the A&P Kids Investments property, has by no means spoken to A&P’s house owners. “I don’t think anyone on staff has either,” she mentioned.
She added that the plans to develop this land had been within the works “before we ever heard about California Forever,” clarifying later that the beginnings of the A&P Kids improvement will be traced again to 2015 — two years earlier than California Eternally’s founding.
Constructing a housing challenge is more likely to be extra profitable for Arrillaga-Andreessen and her brother than promoting the vacant land would have been — particularly if curiosity within the space will increase from the plans for a close-by, high-profile challenge like California Eternally.
“It’s time to build”
For years, Andreessen’s motto “it’s time to build” has turn out to be a rallying cry as he has pushed for extra housing throughout the nation (besides in his personal neighborhood).
California Eternally, situated about 60 miles away from San Francisco, might be thought-about one sort of reply to that decision. However the challenge hit a serious setback final month when it needed to postpone an important poll measure by two years, citing a scarcity of native belief and help.
Whether or not or not that deliberate neighborhood can acquire the zoning and approvals it must proceed as envisioned, Solano County is a hotbed for profitable improvement. The demand for housing has grown so excessive that “anything you build in Vacaville is going to be sold,” mentioned Curtis Stocking, a Vacaville-based actual property agent who had a number of shoppers promote land to California Eternally.
The A&P Kids Investments LLC has actually taken a unique method in gaining approvals for its proposed improvement than California Eternally.
California Eternally CEO Jan Sramek, tasked with shopping for up giant swaths of the county, has reportedly confronted a barrage of criticism from native politicians and residents, lots of whom publicly lambasted him for dropping into the county with grand plans and few particulars.
In the meantime, A&P Kids’s Vacaville improvement is making progress. At a metropolis council assembly in April, Greg Brun, a consultant for A&P Kids, referred to as the proposed improvement plans “visionary.”
“What we’re looking to do here is something that’s unique to Solano County and actually to most of California,” he mentioned. He emphasised that this was their likelihood to plan a big improvement that “doesn’t have the issues you’ve had in the past.”
Morris, who works for Vacaville, echoed this. She defined that, usually, builders create the plan for the land after which submit it to the town for evaluation. However A&P Kids, together with the house owners of adjoining parcels which can be being developed, are “essentially giving the city the money” to supervise the preparation of the plan and rent its personal environmental and land-planning consultants.
Whereas it’s nonetheless very early within the course of, A&P has proven metropolis officers a tough define of a master-planned neighborhood that features duplexes, townhomes and micro-lot single-family indifferent houses “along a spectrum of affordability.” These will all “fit seamlessly into existing residential neighborhoods to the north and south of the project and support walkability,” the group wrote in April. The neighborhood would probably embody a 3.9-acre industrial blended use space, two 1.5-acre parks, and 4.9 acres of extra park and open area with trails.
Brun emphasised that the house owners weren’t a “fly-by-night investor” however a household that has owned the land for many years, in response to assembly information.
Actual property information show these statements to be true, though Arrillaga Sr. wasn’t precisely an area who had spent years dwelling alongside residents. Somewhat, he was an actual property developer who made his fortune by quietly shopping for up the land within the Bay Space within the years earlier than Silicon Valley boomed and tech conglomerates constructed huge campuses there. He and Peery held on to the vacant Solano County parcels for his or her kids’s inheritance.
“It was a long-term investment for their kids,” Brun mentioned.
Classes from an actual property tycoon father-in-law
Within the Sixties, Arrillaga Sr. foresaw a Silicon Valley that didn’t but exist. Again then, the Bay Space was largely orchards and farmlands. However Arrillaga Sr., a Stanford College graduate, noticed the burgeoning semiconductor trade and made a prescient wager: He teamed up with Peery to purchase up 1000’s of acres of low-cost land and instantly erected a collection of empty concrete workplace buildings. Collectively, they constructed the bones of Silicon Valley and waited for the precise companies to catch up.
By the Eighties, their wait was over. Firms like Oracle and Cisco ballooned in measurement and had been determined for more room, which Arrillaga Sr. and Peery had been glad to provide, in response to Fortune. The duo had been rapidly anointed actual property kingmakers, constructing workplaces for LinkedIn, Apple and Google. They grew to become billionaires within the course of.
In 1985, the pair’s focus drifted northward, in response to property information obtained by TechCrunch. They scooped up the 730 acres in Solano County, cut up throughout three largely rectangular blocks of agricultural land, and transferred the land to Arrillaga Sr.’s kids in 1998. In 2006, Arrillaga Sr. and the youngsters transferred possession of the land a last time to A&P Kids Investments, which, in response to filings with the California secretary of state, is operated by Peery and Arrillaga Jr.
A few decade later, Andreessen fell into the footsteps of his father-in-law by investing in a metropolis that didn’t but exist — a metropolis to be constructed a couple of miles from parcels Arrillaga Sr. purchased 30 years prior. Andreessen informed Fortune in 2014 that he typically sought recommendation from Arrillaga Sr. He at present serves because the chief monetary officer of Arrillaga Sr.’s Arrillaga Basis, in response to a TechCrunch evaluation of California state information.
California Eternally’s technique mirrors Arrillaga’s: Each focused low-cost agricultural land, each operated largely in secrecy, and each got down to set up metropolises earlier than there was any apparent demand for them.
The parcels owned by A&P Kids Investments that lie throughout the freeway from the deliberate California Eternally usually are not at present zoned for city improvement, that means that, for now, they’ll lie fallow. The parcel in Vacaville, nonetheless, is additional alongside. Morris mentioned the town is starting a three-year planning course of, earlier than the event’s plan is probably authorized.
Regardless of A&P Kids taking a distinctly totally different method than California Eternally, the event has nonetheless confronted residual anger from the controversial utopia. On the April assembly, one resident cited the formidable challenge as he cautioned the city council to watch out greenlighting extra improvement. “We don’t know how the magical city over by Rio Vista is going to turn out,” he mentioned, referring to California Eternally. “Why should we hurry?”
Throughout that assembly, townsperson after townsperson pushed again in opposition to additional improvement. “Ask yourself if this is the dream,” mentioned Wendy Breckon, one other Vacaville resident. “To the residents here, this is not the dream.”
However Andreessen’s household would possibly nonetheless have a better victory in Solano County with the A&P challenge. Vacaville is “such a beautiful area,” Stocking mentioned, including that “there’s already a big enough demand for housing.”
