Curious regarding flannery associates buying up San Francisco land? We’ll show you why tech billionaires “flannery associates” are doing it. For years, a little-known business called Flannery Associates has been buying up undeveloped land in Solano County, directly northeast of San Francisco.
Why Flannery Associates are Buying San Francisco Land
Hundreds of landowners who have received bids for their properties that are several times higher than the actual value of the land have wondered who is behind these real estate purchases – now thousands of acres of rolling hills.
A recent recent York Times report explains what’s going on: A group of tech elites have banded together to purchase property in order to build their own metropolis. The group includes tech millionaires such as Marc Andreessen of the venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. (The firm Andreessen Horowitz is also a shareholder.) Other significant investors include Chris Dixon, who oversees Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, and the creators of the payment processor Stripe. Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ political activist widow, is also involved.
According to the story, the genius behind Flannery Associates is Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader. A short Google search for Sramek yields a slew of flattering headlines on the former investment banker from around a decade ago. He was in his twenties at the time, and he was somewhat of a golden child in the financial world.
A Flannery Associates pitch from 2017 explains what the company claims to be looking to do: “Turn an arid patch of brown hills between suburbs and rural land into a community with tens of thousands of residents, clean energy, public transportation, and dense urban life.”
Given its admirable claimed aims, it’s remarkable that Flannery Associates chose to keep the inhabitants in the area in the dark about what it’s up to until lately. The company has been functioning in such secrecy that even local Congresspeople have been unable to determine who is behind it.
However, the corporation has recently shed its obscurity, reaching out to public leaders and demanding meetings to discuss its objectives.
Why? The reason for this is likely because Flannery Associates has primarily purchased farmland and other property that is not zoned for residential use. That means it will have to push politicians and persuade residents to vote for rezoning. The corporation is betting that the prospect of additional employment, housing, and public spaces will sway them.
Current residents, on the other hand, only need to glance dozens of miles south to Silicon Valley to discover who a city that caters to the whims of the tech elite ends up being for.
