In 2017, Michael Moritz, the billionaire enterprise capitalist, despatched a observe to a possible investor about what he described as an uncommon alternative: an opportunity to put money into the creation of a brand new California metropolis.

The positioning was in a nook of the San Francisco Bay Space the place land was low cost. Mr. Moritz and others had desires of remodeling tens of hundreds of acres right into a bustling metropolis that, in accordance with the pitch, may generate hundreds of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.

He painted a form of city clean slate the place every part from design to development strategies and new types of governance could possibly be rethought. And it could all be a brief distance from San Francisco and Silicon Valley. “Let me know if this tickles your fancy,” he Stated within the observe, a duplicate of which was reviewed by The New York Occasions.

Since then, an organization known as Flannery Associates has been shopping for massive plots of land in a largely agricultural area 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The corporate, which has little data public about its operations, has dedicated greater than $800 million to safe hundreds of acres of farmland, court docket paperwork present. One parcel after one other, Flannery made presents to each landowner for miles, paying a number of occasions the market charge, whether or not the land had been listed on the market or not.

The purchases by an organization that nobody within the space had heard of and whose enterprise was a thriller have develop into the topic of heavy hypothesis and creating information tales, rattling landowners, native supervisors, the close by Air Pressure base and members of Congress. Was Disney shopping for it for a brand new theme park? Might the purchases be linked to China? A deepwater port?

Flannery is the brainchild of Jan Sramek, 36, a former Goldman Sachs dealer who has quietly courted a few of the tech trade’s largest names as buyers, in accordance with the pitch and other people acquainted with the matter. The corporate’s ambitions increase on the 2017 pitch: Take an arid patch of brown hills lower by a two-lane freeway between suburbs and rural land, and convert into it right into a group with tens of hundreds of residents, clear vitality, public transportation and dense city life.

The corporate’s buyers, whose identities haven’t been beforehand reported, are a who’s who of Silicon Valley, in accordance with three individuals who weren’t licensed to talk publicly concerning the plans.

They embrace Mr. Moritz; Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, enterprise capitalist and Democratic donor; Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, buyers on the Andreessen Horowitz enterprise capital agency; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the funds firm Stripe; Laurene Powell Jobs, founding father of the Emerson Collective; and Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, entrepreneurs turned buyers. Andreessen Horowitz can also be a backer. It was unclear how a lot every had invested.

Brian Brokaw, a consultant for the investor group, stated in a press release that the group was made up of “Californians who consider that Solano County’s and California’s greatest days are forward.” He stated the group deliberate to start out working with Solano County residents and elected officers, in addition to with Travis Air Pressure Base, subsequent week.

In California, housing has lengthy been an intractable downside, and Silicon Valley’s moguls have lengthy been annoyed with the Bay Space’s actual property scarcity, and the issue of constructing in California usually, as their work forces have exploded. Corporations like Google have clashed with cities like Palo Alto and Mountain View over increasing their headquarters, whereas their executives have funded pro-development politicians and the “Sure in my yard” activists who’ve pushed for looser improvement and zoning legal guidelines in hopes of creating it simpler to construct quicker and taller.

The sensible want for more room has at occasions morphed into lofty visions of constructing total cities from scratch. A number of years in the past, Y Combinator, the start-up incubator, introduced an initiative with desires of turning empty land into a brand new economic system and society. Years earlier than that, Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and billionaire Fb investor, invested within the Seasteading Institute, an try and construct a brand new society on lily pad-like buildings within the law-and-tax-free open ocean.

However whereas these concepts have garnered a number of consideration and curiosity — lauded in some corners for imaginative and prescient and derided in others for hubris — they’ve been little greater than discuss.

As Flannery started searching for property, it purchased a lot land, so quick, that it spooked locals who had no thought who the client was or the plans it had in thoughts. Catherine Moy, the mayor of Fairfield, Calif., began posting concerning the mission on Fb a number of years in the past after she received a name from a farmer about some thriller purchaser making presents all through the county. In an interview, Ms. Moy stated she had gone to the county assessor’s workplace and located that Flannery had bought tens of hundreds of acres.

John Garamendi, a Democrat who together with Mike Thompson, one other Democrat, represents the encompassing area in Congress, stated he had been making an attempt to determine the corporate’s identification for 4 years.

“I couldn’t discover out something,” he stated.

On Friday, he stated that had all of the sudden modified. This week representatives for Flannery reached out to him and different elected officers requesting conferences about their plans. That assembly is now being scheduled, he stated.

“That is their first effort, ever, to speak to any of the native representatives, myself included,” he stated.

The land that Flannery has been buying will not be zoned for residential use, and even in his 2017 pitch, Mr. Moritz acknowledged that rezoning may “clearly be difficult” — a nod to California’s notoriously troublesome and litigious improvement course of.

To tug off the mission, the corporate will virtually definitely have to make use of the state’s initiative system to get Solano County residents to vote on it. The hope is that voters will likely be enticed by guarantees of hundreds of native jobs, elevated tax income and investments in infrastructure like parks, a performing arts middle, purchasing, eating and a commerce faculty.

The monetary features could possibly be large, Mr. Moritz stated within the 2017 pitch. He estimated the return could possibly be many occasions the preliminary funding simply from the rezoning, and way more if and after they began constructing.

“If the plans materialize anyplace shut to what’s being contemplated, this must be a spectacular funding,” Mr. Moritz wrote.

The Bay Space is among the many nation’s costliest areas, even after lease and residential costs fell after the pandemic. Economists and housing specialists have for many years blamed a longstanding housing scarcity and California’s incapability to construct sufficient to fulfill demand.

Mr. Moritz nodded to this within the e-mail to the investor, arguing that “this effort ought to relieve a few of the Silicon Valley pressures all of us really feel — rising residence costs, homelessness, congestion and many others.” He added that his group had secured some 1,400 acres for lower than $5,000 per acre. The value per acre has since escalated, and the corporate’s most up-to-date purchases have neared $20,000 per acre, in accordance with court docket paperwork and other people acquainted with the matter.

The purchases burst into public view this spring when legal professionals for Flannery filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court docket, accusing landowners of colluding to inflate costs.

The group targeted on Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills, an agricultural patch of jap Solano County between the cities of Fairfield and Rio Vista, in accordance with the lawsuit. This space is usually unpopulated and lined with ranches, windmills and energy strains.

In November 2018, the corporate despatched presents to “most landowners on this space,” the lawsuit stated, and included incentives similar to permitting sellers to retain earnings from wind generators, in addition to keep on the properties rent-free beneath long-term lease-back agreements. Over the 5 years, the corporate bought some 140 properties from 400 house owners, the lawsuit stated.

This month, a lawyer representing landowners collectively filed a movement to dismiss the case. In July, three landowners stated they’d reached a possible settlement with Flannery. Different house owners couldn’t be reached for remark this week, or had declined to take action.

Because the presents continued and costs escalated, landowners in Solano County began buzzing about who was shopping for a lot land for a lot cash.

“They’d include a suggestion of 4 and 5 occasions over the market on the time,” Ms. Moy stated. “They had been offers that they couldn’t go up.”

Flannery’s presents had been creating multimillionaires throughout the county, however nobody appeared to know what the mysterious firm meant to do with land that now amounted to a big chunk of the complete county.

That modified final week, when residents began receiving texts and emails with a ballot gauging their opinions on quite a lot of questions. One requested them to charge the favorability of a number of names together with “Joe Biden,” “Donald Trump” and “Flannery Associates.” One other query started with an outline of a doable poll initiative for a mission that “would come with a brand new metropolis with tens of hundreds of latest houses, a big photo voltaic vitality farm, orchards with over 1,000,000 new bushes, and over 10,000 acres of latest parks and open area.”

Ms. Moy cited poor infrastructure, together with the two-lane freeway bisecting the area that she stated was already clogged by super-commuters driving to the perimeters of the Bay Space and past. The world can also be vulnerable to common droughts and is at excessive threat for wildfires.

“It appears very pie within the sky,” she stated.

Sheelagh McNeill contributed analysis. Yiwen Lu contributed reporting.