‘California Never?’ Utopian city faces setbacks from industrial flight
The 'California Forever' project in Solano County is facing significant setbacks after losing its lead industrial investor, Saronic, due to local opposition and delays, prompting Saronic to move its project to Texas. This incident underscores California's broader challenges with deindustrialization, regulatory hurdles, and growing opposition to development, including data centers. The article highlights how such hostility to growth is pushing industrial expansion to other states.
The ambitious 'California Forever' project, aiming to build a city for 400,000 people and create 500,000 jobs between San Francisco and Sacramento in Solano County, is encountering significant hurdles. Backed by Silicon Valley investors, the development recently lost Saronic, its lead industrial investor, which chose to relocate its $3.2 billion autonomous ship-building project to Texas.
Saronic's departure was primarily due to delays and opposition from the area's local state senator and the Solano County Board of Supervisors, signaling what the article describes as an embedded 'hostility to growth' within California's political system. This setback is also a defeat for Governor Gavin Newsom, who had supported the project. The article notes that California's policies have long 'strangled development' for industrial facilities and contributed to the state's rapid deindustrialization, losing over 610,000 jobs since 2000.
In contrast, states like Texas, Nevada, and Arizona are actively attracting industrial growth with lower taxes, less regulation, and more competitive energy prices. While California's economy has historically relied on tech giants, software employment is declining, and major companies are announcing cutbacks. The article also mentions 'growing opposition to data centers' as another factor complicating the state's economic future, alongside fears of AI eating more software jobs than it creates.
Former California Assembly speaker Robert Hertzberg, an advisor to the project, emphasized the need for California to demonstrate it can move more quickly to facilitate development. The long-term success of the state's economy, he argues, depends on diversifying beyond software and fostering advanced manufacturing, but current policies make it difficult to create such jobs.