Plan submitted to increase Bay Area city from 30,000 to 400,000 residents

A year after pulling a measure from the ballot amid catastrophic polling numbers, the team behind California Forever has presented a new plan to Solano County. If approved, the Suisun Expansion Project would annex 22,873 acres of unincorporated Solano County to become part of Suisun City.

Last year, a secretive group of investors were outed for buying up 65,000 acres of land in Solano County, making them the largest landowners in the county. Once the purchases became public, the group came forward under the name California Forever, announcing their intention to build a new city of 400,000 people largely in rural areas around Suisun City and Rio Vista.

The announcement was widely unpopular in the county and, amid dire polling numbers, California Forever pulled the November 2024 ballot measure that would have allowed the project to bypass certain zoning restrictions to develop the area. At the time, California Forever CEO Jan Sramek said they would be back to the drawing board with plans to resubmit the project in 2026.

Instead, they’re now offering over 22,000 acres to Suisun City for incorporation. The plan is an incredibly ambitious one: The design emphasizes mixed use spaces, with blocks containing housing, restaurants, parks and shopping, along with easy access to public transit. The document submitted to the city calls it “the first time in a century that anyone has tried to create a new walkable city of this scale.”

The application broadly calls for two, 20-year buildouts of neighborhoods, commercial, mixed-use and greenspace that would ultimately include about 400,000 residents, with phase one initially preparing for up to 150,000 residents. The document says it would become “comparable to other Solano cities, such as Fairfield, Vallejo, and Vacaville.” Solano County currently has about 455,000 total residents; Suisun City has a population of about 30,000.

The proposal says the housing would be “medium-density.” “It follows the patterns that have created some of the most beloved neighborhoods in the country, whether in smaller towns like Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Davis, California, or in neighborhoods of large cities like Noe Valley and Marina in San Francisco,” the plan reads.

The incorporation would add a huge swath of land to the city, from Highway 12 to the south, Creed Road to the north and the edge of Rio Vista to the east. 

Suisun City manager Bret Prebula said the city will take 30 to 45 days to start the environmental review process, and once that first phase, known as “scoping,” is done, a draft environmental impact report will be prepared and submitted for public feedback.

“In the months that we’ve been having really high-level conversations with them about our interest with jobs and housing, transportation, and to have open space as part of this process, among other very big picture items, they’ve really listened,” Prebula said.

The first phase would use existing and increased supply of groundwater and surface water and rely on recycled water for non-potable uses. The project proposed to build three water intake stations, with two in Lindsey Slough and one in Carpenter Slough, along with a surface water storage pond and two water treatment facilities that could potentially treat more than 26 million gallons of water per day. The plan calls for relying on those sources for the first phase, before the second phase would require imported water from outside sources, according to the proposal.

It’s not clear if locals want Suisun City to go from a relatively quiet suburb of 30,000 to a bustling metro of 400,000. A public meeting on the project is scheduled for Oct. 27 at the Vault Event Center in Suisun City.

Bay City News Service contributed to this report.