It’s an old California riddle: How do you turn a pipe dream into a shovel-ready project?
Answer: Make a deal with the unions.
That’s what California Forever, the billionaire-backed proposal to build a city and manufacturing center in Solano Country, hopes will come from a new partnership with Northern California carpenters.
The project’s organizers on Wednesday announced a partnership (opens in new tab) with the Napa-Solano Building and Construction Trades Council and the Northern California Carpenters Union, ensuring that construction on California Forever’s land for the next 40 years uses union labor. At the same time, the labor groups released a petition urging the local government to let California Forever break ground this year on a proposed shipyard and the Solano Foundry, a 2,100-acre manufacturing park.
Adding to the momentum, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute released a report estimating that California Forever would generate $215 billion in private investment, 530,000 jobs, and $16 billion in annual tax revenue over the next 44 years.
California Forever, funded by Silicon Valley titans including Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and The Standard Chairman Michael Moritz, was initially proposed as a utopia built from scratch on Solano County pastureland: a picturesque city of 400,000 people, with European-style architecture and walkable communities. After public pushback, the plan was temporarily shelved in 2024. For the past year, the group has focused its energy on a hard pivot: building a defense manufacturing hub, complete with a shipyard, and expanding nearby Suisun City (population 30,000) onto California Forever land.
The shipbuilding proposal hopes to ride the wave of President Donald Trump’s call to on-shore U.S. defense manufacturing. California Forever CEO Jan Sramek has said the shipyard, which would be on 1,400 acres near Collinsville, would benefit national security. The U.S. is responsible for about 0.1% of global shipbuilding, compared with China’s 53.3%, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
California Forever has had a rocky start. For several years, the organization quietly bought up around 66,000 acres of Solano County farmland without divulging its grand plan to local officials. When a New York Times investigation (opens in new tab) in November 2023 unveiled the group’s ambition to build a new city, locals were outraged. Sramek has been on a charm offensive ever since, appearing frequently on local news shows and podcasts.
The new focus on manufacturing has won the support of powerful local allies, including the unions and politicians. In March, Rep. John Garamendi, whose district includes Solano County, publicly endorsed the SHIPS Act legislation that would put more federal funding behind U.S. ship production. Notably, Garamendi made his announcement at Mare Island, where California Forever’s proposed shipyard would be located.
The SHIPS Act, which has yet to be voted on in Congress, would create “maritime prosperity zones” that offer tax incentives to U.S.-based boat manufacturers. Last week, Sramek positioned the California Forever shipyard, (opens in new tab) along with the Cal Poly Maritime Academy, as one of these zones “to help restore America’s maritime dominance in the Pacific.”
Sramek said on X that building West Coast shipyards is necessary to combat China. “If you’re going to build a network of hundreds of autonomous boats/ships for a conflict in the Pacific, you can’t build them on the east or gulf coasts,” he wrote. (opens in new tab) “Because there is no reasonable way to get them into the Pacific.”
But California Forever is not a sure thing. The shipyard must overcome legislative and environmental obstacles. Multiple agencies have authority over the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, with the ability to veto operations that would compromise the water supply, according to Solano Together, an opposition group fighting California Forever. The group points to a 1989 study that implied that any Collinsville shipyard would require significant dredging, which can pollute drinking water and disrupt ecosystems.
The shipyard plans have yet to be approved by the county. Sramek has been working with local legislatures on a bill to streamline the approval process, though it was still being drafted as of late last year (opens in new tab).