Tech billionaires' secretive plan to build a California city from scratch

For years, residents in Solano County, California, heard about a mysterious group buying up thousands of acres of farmland and making millionaires out of property owners. The agricultural land had been owned by the same families for decades — some of it for more than a century.

But the company, Flannery Associates, did not say what its plans were for the land, dotted with towering wind turbines and sheep grazing on pastureland. It paid several times market value and made offers on properties that were not for sale, according to officials familiar with the land purchases.

Then, last week, a survey was sent to residents asking them what they thought about "a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space," according to a screenshot of the survey shared with the Los Angeles Times.

That's when it became clear that Flannery Associates had big plans for the rural landscape.

Over a five-year period, the company became the largest landowner in Solano County after purchasing more than 55,000 acres of undeveloped land. The company has paid