TechCrunch has learned that the family of Marc Andreessen, a leading venture capitalist and one of the investors in California Forever, a utopian city expected to be built in Solano County, California, is planning a large-scale community development in the area.
Andreessen is married to Laura Arrillaga Andreessen, whose father, a Silicon Valley real estate mogul, bought land in Solano County decades before his death in 2022, according to county records obtained by TechCrunch. A limited liability company run by Arrillaga Andreessen's brother, A&P Children Investments, has begun the planning process for a mixed-use development that would include more than 1,000 housing units.
The area is on the edge of Vacaville and 10 miles from the proposed California Forever development, according to property records, planning documents and business registration information reviewed by TechCrunch. A&P representatives said at a community meeting in March that A&P plans to eventually sell the land to Arrillaga-Andreessen and her brother, John Arrillaga Jr.
Andreessen, Arrillaga-Andreessen and Arrillaga Jr. did not respond to requests for comment.
Two other parcels owned by the LLC that are not part of the Vacaville development plan are even closer to California Forever: This one, about 600 acres, is just a few miles down the highway from where California Forever plans to build a solar farm.
All told, the Arrillaga family co-owns at least three of these parcels, totaling about 730 acres, which records show were originally purchased in 1985 by his father, billionaire real estate developer John Arrillaga Sr., and business partner Richard Peary. Peary's children would likely benefit if any of these properties were sold, because state documents list Peary as a co-director of A&P. A spokesman for Peary Arrillaga, the real estate company the two founded, declined to comment.
California Forever is a proposed master-planned community carved out of more than 60,000 acres that Silicon Valley's elite have been quietly purchasing in Solano County since 2017. Investors in the land include Andreessen, as well as Mike Moritz, Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs, who, according to The New York Times, have collectively committed roughly $1 billion in pursuit of one goal: to build a new utopian city free from the evils that plague places like San Francisco.
California Forever project leaders were unaware of Andreessen's wife and brother-in-law's ties to A&P Children Investments when they began buying land in 2017 and “never made an offer” on the LLC's land, a spokesman said.
“We were not aware that the Arrillaga and Peary families owned land in Solano County until two years ago, five years into the project,” the spokesperson said, adding that how the project found out was “nothing dramatic.” “We were researching who owned the land near our property and A&P caught our eye. We looked into A&P and found out it was owned by the Arrillaga and Peary families.”
Erin Morris, Vacaville's community development director, who oversees the East of Leisure Town Road specific plan that includes the A&P Children's Investments property, said she has not spoken to A&P's owners. “I don't think anybody on my staff has spoken to them,” Morris said.
She added that plans to develop the property had been in the works “before we'd even heard of California Forever,” later clarifying that A&P Children's development began all the way back in 2015, two years before California Forever was founded.
Building a housing project would likely be more profitable for Arrillaga-Andreessen and her brothers than selling the vacant land, especially if plans for a high-profile project like California Forever boost interest in the area.
The A&P-owned property is near the California Forever Project. Click to see a larger image. Image credit: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch/OpenStreetMap
“Now is the time to build.”
For years, Andreessen's motto, “The time to build is now,” has been the rallying cry for homebuilding across the country (except his own region).
California Forever, located about 60 miles outside San Francisco, could be one answer to that call, but the project suffered a major setback last month when it had to postpone a key ballot measure for two years due to a lack of local credibility and support.
Whether or not the planned community gets the zoning and approvals it needs to move forward as envisioned, Solano County has become a hotbed of lucrative development. Demand for housing has risen so much that “anything you build in Vacaville sells,” said Curtis Stocking, a Vacaville-based real estate agent who has several clients who have sold land to California Forever.
A&P Children Investments LLC certainly took a different approach than California Forever in gaining approval for the proposed development.
California Forever CEO Jan Sramek, who is tasked with acquiring vast tracts of land in the county, has reportedly faced fierce criticism from local politicians and residents, many of whom have publicly accused him of going into the county with grandiose plans and few details.
Meanwhile, development at A&P Children's Vacaville is moving forward: At a city council meeting in April, Greg Brann, president of A&P Children's, called the proposed development plan “visionary.”
“What we're doing here is unique to Solano County, and in fact, most of California,” he said. He emphasized that this is an opportunity to plan large-scale development “without the issues we've had in the past.”
A&P Children's proposal to the City of Vacaville. Image courtesy of City of Vacaville
Morris, who works in Vacaville, agreed. He explained that typically, a developer would prepare a site plan and submit it to the city for review, but A&P Children's is “essentially giving money to the city” to oversee the preparation of the plan and hire its own environmental and land planning consultants, along with the owners of the adjacent parcels it's developing.
Though it's still early in the process, A&P has provided city officials with a rough outline of the master-planned community, which would include duplexes, townhouses and single-family homes on microlots at a “variety of price points,” all of which would “blend seamlessly into existing residential neighborhoods to the north and south of the project and support walkability,” the group wrote in April. The community could also include a 3.9-acre commercial mixed-use area, two 1.5-acre parks and an additional 4.9 acres of parkland and open space with trails.
Brun stressed that the owners were not “one-night investors” but a family that had owned the land for decades, according to a transcript of the meeting.
Property records prove those statements true, but Arrillaga wasn't a local who'd lived with the locals for years. Rather, he was a real estate developer who'd made his fortune quietly buying up Bay Area land in the years before Silicon Valley boomed and tech conglomerates built their giant campuses. He and Peary had kept the vacant land in Solano County as an inheritance for their children.
“It was a long-term investment for the kids,” Brun said.
Lessons learned from real estate mogul father-in-law
In the 1960s, Arrillaga Sr. foresaw Silicon Valley before it even existed. At the time, the Bay Area was mostly orchards and farmland. But the Stanford University graduate saw the semiconductor industry booming and made a prescient bet: He teamed up with Peary to buy up thousands of acres of cheap land, then quickly filled it with vacant concrete office buildings. Together, the two built the skeleton of Silicon Valley and waited for the actual businesses to catch up.
By the 1980s, their wait was over. Companies like Oracle and Cisco were expanding rapidly and desperate for more space, and according to Fortune magazine, Arrillaga and Peary were happy to provide it. The pair quickly became established real estate moguls, building offices for LinkedIn, Apple, and Google. They became billionaires in the process.
In 1985, the couple shifted their interests north, buying up 730 acres in Solano County and dividing it into three roughly rectangular farm blocks, according to property records obtained by TechCrunch, before transferring the land to Arrillaga Sr.'s children in 1998. In 2006, Arrillaga Sr. and his children ultimately transferred ownership of the land to A&P Children's Investments, which is run by Peary and Arrillaga Jr., according to filings with the California Secretary of State.
Nearly a decade later, Mr. Andreessen followed in his father-in-law's footsteps and invested in a city that didn't exist yet, to be built a few miles from land Mr. Arrillaga had bought 30 years earlier. Mr. Andreessen told Fortune in 2014 that Mr. Arrillaga often sought his advice. Mr. Andreessen now serves as chief financial officer of Mr. Arrillaga's Arrillaga Foundation, according to a TechCrunch review of California state records.
California Forever's strategy is similar to Arrillaga's: both targeted cheap farmland, both operated largely in secrecy, and both began building big cities before the demand was apparent.
The land owned by A&P Children Investments across the highway from the California Forever project site will remain fallow for the time being because it is not currently zoned for urban development. But the Vacaville site is moving forward with development. Morris said the city is beginning a three-year planning process before any development plans are approved.
Despite A&P Children's decidedly different approach than California Forever, the development faces residual anger over the controversial utopia. At the April meeting, one resident took aim at the ambitious project, warning the City Council to be cautious about approving further development. “We don't know what the magical city beyond Rio Vista will be like,” he said of California Forever. “Why the rush?”
At the meeting, town resident after town resident spoke out against further development. “Ask yourself if this is a dream,” Vacaville resident Wendy Brecon said. “For the residents here, this is not a dream.”
But the Andreessens may have an easier time winning in Solano County with their A&P project. Vacaville is “a beautiful area,” Stocking said, adding, “There's already a lot of demand for housing.”