On March 19th, California Forever, which plans to build a new city in Northern California’s Solano County, said it has plans to build a new shipbuilding facility on 1,400 acres near Collinsville, California located along California’s Sacramento River.
In a Facebook post, Rio Vista, California Mayor Edwin Okamura reported on a meeting with California Forever officials to discuss the shipyard site:
“NEWS ALERT: Our City Manager and I attended an online meeting (on 3/19) with California Forever, retired military leaders, and county officials to discuss a shipbuilding executive order that President Trump is expected to sign shortly.
A proposed site for this initiative is near Collinsville—an area long suspected as a potential port. Early discussions suggest tax incentives for shipbuilding and related businesses; federal infrastructure funding (including Hwy 12); and immediate job creation. This is still in the early stages, and we are gathering information …”
A shipbuilding operation would mark a sharp departure for California Forever, a controversial billionaire-backed development group that has spent more than $1 billion buying up over 50,000 acres in Solano County. The group’s ambitions include developing a city of up to 400,000 residents on 17,500 acres near Rio Vista. While the plan had included the development of some light manufacturing — including drones, robotics and modular housing — it didn’t previously mention anything as heavy as shipbuilding, nor did it propose that any maritime industries would take advantage of the land it owns on the Sacramento River, according to the San Francisco Chronicle report.
In 2023, the New York Times reported that Flannery Associates had spent $800 million secretly buying up land in Solano County, led by Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who has quietly courted some of the tech industry’s biggest names as investors. The company’s investors reportedly include Michael Moritz, the billionaire venture capitalist, Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder; Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, investors at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payments company Stripe; Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; and Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, entrepreneurs turned investors. Andreessen Horowitz is also a backer. It was unclear how much each had invested.
Two people familiar with the California Forever/Flannery Associates project told AJOT that they worried that the shipyard proposal was a ploy to appeal to working class voters, and undermine political opposition in Solano County, by offering the possibility that thousands of shipyard jobs might be created. This would then give political cover to the true goal of building a billionaire backed real estate development based on cheaply bought Solano County farmland.
On March 26th, The Bay Area Council which represents “top CEOs and executives from more than 330 of the region's largest employers” in the San Francisco Bay Area announced that it supports the California Forever shipyard project:
“The Bay Area Council for the past several years has led a quiet effort to lay the foundations for revitalizing and relaunching the region’s shipbuilding industry and the many jobs and other economic activities it could support. And now, that work is gaining momentum and more visibility as the federal government pursues a bipartisan agenda for rebuilding the nation’s shipbuilding capacity and a private development consortium – California Forever – eyes plans for a major shipbuilding facility on 1,440 waterfront acres near the small town of Collinsville that Solano County in 1979 presciently zoned for “heavy industry or marine terminal use.” Just this week, Council CEO Jim Wunderman and Senior Vice President Matt Regan joined San Francisco Bay Ferry Executive Director Seamus Murphy and local elected officials from Solano for a tour of the site led by California Forever leaders who are also working on plans for a new community nearby. The group came away from the tour impressed by the scale and potential of the site and plans for shipbuilding. Nowhere else in the United States does a site of this size and strategic logistical advantages exist.”
California Forever said in a statement: “We deeply respect California’s and the Delta’s maritime heritage. Our state and region have always risen to support American defense during critical times. This call was recently renewed through bipartisan efforts to rebuild our nation’s shipbuilding capabilities, including the proposed bipartisan SHIPS for America Act and the new Office of Shipbuilding in the White House,” California Forever said.
The Trump administration is supporting new shipbuilding in the United States including the proposed Bi-Partisan Ships for America Act or SHIPS ACT which authorizes the United States to build and acquire at least 250 new U.S. flag ships over the next ten years.
It is the “starting point that is needed to be supported,” according to Charles Papavizas, a maritime attorney and partner in the firm of Winston and Strawn based in Washington, D.C.
The Collinsville site would address a major concern of SHIPS ACT advocates which is that a major shipbuilding initiative to build hundreds of new ships would require a site with the capability to build and launch 5-10 ships at the same time.
This was the strategy that Henry Kaiser employed to build Liberty ships during World War II utilizing multiple slipways at the Kaiser Shipyard at Richmond, California.
On 1,400 acres adjoining the Sacramento River, California Forever’s Collinsville site could provide the space for such a shipbuilding complex and support the Trump administration’s efforts to re-introduce mass-production to U.S. shipbuilding.
Stas Margaronis
WEST COAST CORRESPONDENT
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