The household of powerhouse enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen, one of many traders behind the hoped-for California Endlessly utopian metropolis in Solano County, California, is planning a considerable group growth within the space, TechCrunch has discovered.
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 keeping with county data obtained by TechCrunch. An LLC operated by Arrillaga-Andreessen’s brother that’s referred to as A&P Kids Investments, has begun the planning course of for a mixed-use growth with greater than 1,000 properties.
This space is on the sting of the town of Vacaville, 10 miles away from the proposed California Endlessly growth, in keeping with property data, planning paperwork, and enterprise registry data seen by TechCrunch. A consultant for A&P mentioned at a group assembly in March that A&P plans to in the end 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 growth are even nearer to California Endlessly. This land — roughly 600 acres — is throughout the freeway and down a number of miles from the place California Endlessly hopes to construct its photo voltaic farm.
All advised, the Arrillaga household co-owns at the 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 associate, Richard Peery, in 1985, data present. The sale of any of the properties would seemingly 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 actual property firm based by the 2 males, declined to remark.
California Endlessly is a proposed master-planned group, 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. Buyers 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 keeping with the New York Instances.
The challenge leaders of California Endlessly 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 discovered. “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 group growth 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 homeowners. “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 growth may be traced again to 2015 — two years earlier than California Endlessly’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 Endlessly.
“It’s time to build”
For years, Andreessen’s motto “it’s time to build” has develop into a rallying cry as he has pushed for extra housing throughout the nation (besides in his personal neighborhood).
California Endlessly, positioned about 60 miles away from San Francisco, may very well be thought of one sort of reply to that decision. However the challenge hit a serious setback final month when it needed to postpone a vital poll measure by two years, citing a scarcity of native belief and help.
Whether or not or not that deliberate group can achieve the zoning and approvals it must proceed as envisioned, Solano County is a hotbed for profitable growth. 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 purchasers promote land to California Endlessly.
The A&P Kids Investments LLC has actually taken a distinct method in gaining approvals for its proposed growth than California Endlessly.
California Endlessly CEO Jan Sramek, tasked with shopping for up massive 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 growth is making progress. At a metropolis council assembly in April, Greg Brun, a consultant for A&P Kids, referred to as the proposed growth 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 probability to plan a big growth 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 assessment. However A&P Kids, together with the homeowners of adjoining parcels which are 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 group that features duplexes, townhomes and micro-lot single-family indifferent properties “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 group would probably embody a 3.9-acre business combined use space, two 1.5-acre parks, and 4.9 acres of further park and open house with trails.
Brun emphasised that the homeowners weren’t a “fly-by-night investor” however a household that has owned the land for many years, in keeping with assembly data.
Actual property data show these statements to be true, though Arrillaga Sr. wasn’t precisely a neighborhood who had spent years residing alongside residents. Moderately, 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 large 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 guess: 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 Nineteen 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 completely satisfied to provide, in keeping with 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 keeping with property data obtained by TechCrunch. They scooped up the 730 acres in Solano County, break 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 kids transferred possession of the land a remaining time to A&P Kids Investments, which, in keeping with 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 number of miles from parcels Arrillaga Sr. purchased 30 years prior. Andreessen advised Fortune in 2014 that he usually sought recommendation from Arrillaga Sr. He at the moment serves because the chief monetary officer of Arrillaga Sr.’s Arrillaga Basis, in keeping with a TechCrunch assessment of California state data.
California Endlessly’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 Endlessly should not at the moment zoned for city growth, 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 permitted.
Regardless of A&P Kids taking a distinctly totally different method than California Endlessly, the event has nonetheless confronted residual anger from the controversial utopia. On the April assembly, one resident cited the bold challenge as he cautioned the city council to watch out greenlighting extra growth. “We don’t know how the magical city over by Rio Vista is going to turn out,” he mentioned, referring to California Endlessly. “Why should we hurry?”
Throughout that assembly, townsperson after townsperson pushed again in opposition to additional growth. “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 may nonetheless have a neater 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.”
