Solano County’s ‘California Forever’ Project Loses $3.2 Billion Shipyard to Texas

California Forever, a “walkable city” project in Solano County with strong ties to 15-minute city principles, backed by tech investors Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs, just lost a proposed $3.2 billion shipyard that backers and supporters hoped would become a cornerstone of the development. The shipyard is instead headed to Texas, prompting renewed debate over whether California is doing enough to compete for major employers, ABC7 reports.

This seems to be a larger problem for the Golden State as California was just Dethroned: Fortune 500 Crown Goes to Texas. The 2026 Fortune 500 list shows Texas leading California in Fortune 500 companies 57-56.

“Since 2017, California Forever purchased 50,000 acres of farm and pasture land in Solano County in secret for $900 million,” the Globe reported in 2024. “After the purchase was done, in secret to avoid land speculation rises, the company drew up plans and started the process to rezone the land from agriculture to residential and commercial, with the city to be in the area between Travis Air Force Base and the city of Rio Vista.”

“The scope and size of California Forever’s plans are nothing short of breathtaking,” the Globe reported. “If the East Solano Plan as it is now called comes to pass it will transform rural Solano County—62 percent of its land is devoted to agriculture—into something quite different. At build-out some 400,000 people will live there, almost doubling Solano’s current population. Nearly 18,000 acres of pasture land will become urban or suburban; up will rise a small city of many thousands of new homes, office parks, office buildings, solar installations, new streets, widened highways, and all the infrastructure required to support all that.”

Travis Air Force Base is in the neighborhood of this proposed new city-to-be, and many concerns have been raised on how the development will affect it.

In addition to building a new “walkable city” with housing, California Forward plans large industrial components: the Solano Foundry, and the Solano Shipyard on 7,500 acres of waterfront land along a deep-water channel in the Sacramento River Delta near Collinsville.

“Defense technology company Saronic announced Thursday it will build its next-generation shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, rather than at the proposed California Forever site in southeastern Solano County,” ABC 7 reported.

California Forever and supporters, including powerful building trades unions, have been frantically lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature for fast-track approvals to secure the deal before the legislative session ends at the end of August.

They hired former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg to specifically lobby for:

• Using an older environmental impact report.
• Limiting legal challenges.
• Allow annexation by Suisun City.
• Expedite the project under CEQA reforms.

In a joint letter, they warned that without action, California risks losing “billions in investments and tens of thousands of jobs this summer to Texas,” the Los Angeles Times reported in June. This is a common economic development tactic, but the Texas incentives make the threat credible. No final decision from Saronic has been publicly announced, and California Forever continues recruiting other shipbuilders too. However, regulatory delays, environmental reviews, and local opposition in Solano County have slowed the overall project for years.

And opinion polls have shown that the majority of Solano County residents appear not too keen on all this grand envisioning. Opponents also slammed California Forever for pursuing relief behind closed doors with state leaders and circumventing local opposition, the Times reported, especially with the group secretly buying up agricultural land since 2018, and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to court local residents and at least $330,000 lobbying the governor and legislative leaders for favorable legislation.

The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept where residents can access work, shopping, healthcare, education, recreation, parks, and daily necessities within a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit trip from their home. However, some believe the 15-minute city is a deliberate plot for authoritarian control.