When Jan Sramek walked into the American Legion post in Rio Vista, Calif., for a town-hall assembly final month, everybody within the room knew that he was actually simply there to get yelled at.

For six years a mysterious company referred to as Flannery Associates, which Mr. Sramek managed, had upended the city of 10,000 by spending tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} making an attempt to purchase each farm within the space. Flannery made multimillionaires out of some house owners and sparked feuds amongst others. It sued a gaggle of holdouts who had refused its above-market provides, on the grounds that they have been colluding for extra.

The firm was Rio Vista’s principal supply of gossip, but till a few weeks before the meeting nobody within the room had heard of Mr. Sramek or knew what Flannery was as much as. Residents fearful it could be a front for overseas spies seeking to surveil a close-by Air Force base. One idea held the corporate was buying land for a brand new Disneyland.

Now the reality was standing in entrance of them. And one way or the other it was weirder than the rumors.

The fact was that Mr. Sramek wished to construct a metropolis from the bottom up, in an agricultural area whose defining function was how little it had modified. The thought would have been handled as a joke if it weren’t backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires who included Michael Moritz, the enterprise capitalist; Reid Hoffman, the investor and co-founder of LinkedIn; and Laurene Powell Jobs, the founding father of the Emerson Collective and the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. They and others from the know-how world had spent some $900 million on farmland in an illustration of their lifeless seriousness about Mr. Sramek’s imaginative and prescient.

Rio Vista, a part of Solano County, is technically throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, however its bait retailers and tractor suppliers and Main Street lined with American flags can really feel a state away. Mr. Sramek’s plan was billed as a salve for San Francisco’s city housing issues. But paving over ranches to construct a metropolis of 400,000 wasn’t the type of thought you’d anticipate a gaggle of farmers to be enthused about.

As the TV cameras anticipated, a gaggle of protesters had gathered within the parking zone to shake indicators close to pickup vehicles. Inside, a crowd in denims and boots sat in chairs, wanting skeptical.

Mr. Sramek, 36, who’s from the Czech Republic and had come to California to attempt to make it in start-ups, was now the middle of their financial system. Flannery had turn into the biggest landowner within the area, amassing an space twice the scale of San Francisco.

Christine Mahoney, 63, whose great-grandfather established her household’s farm when Rutherford B. Hayes was president, instructed me that, prefer it or not, Mr. Sramek was now her neighbor. Ms. Mahoney had refused a number of provides for her land, and Flannery’s lawsuit — an antitrust case in federal court docket — described her as a conspirator who was out to bilk his firm.

But she had by no means met the person in individual, so she got here to say howdy.

“You might be asking yourself, ‘Why is this guy with a funny accent here?’” Mr. Sramek started the assembly.

He spent about 20 minutes pitching his plans earlier than submitting to questions and resentments. People accused him of pushing small farms out of enterprise. They stated Flannery’s cash was turning households towards one another.

“Good neighbors don’t sue their neighbors!” one man yelled to applause.

Mr. Sramek, who’s tall, intense and practiced within the artwork of holding eye contact, stayed up entrance after the assembly to glad-hand.

When Ms. Mahoney and her husband, Dan, 65, approached him, Mr. Sramek stated, “Hi, Christine!” as if they’d met a number of occasions earlier than and he wasn’t at present suing her.

“I’d like to welcome you as our neighbor, but it’s kind of difficult,” Ms. Mahoney stated.

She talked about how a lot stress the lawsuit had placed on her household.

Mr. Sramek nodded, as if she have been speaking about another person, not him. Then he requested the couple to dinner. The Mahoneys agreed.

Going to the Ballot

One key distinction between constructing an app and constructing a metropolis is {that a} metropolis requires permission. On Wednesday, Mr. Sramek’s firm formally filed a proposed poll initiative that may ask voters to purchase in. Specifically, the measure goals to amend a longstanding “orderly growth” ordinance that protects Solano County’s farms and open house by steering improvement to city areas.

Solano’s residents have constantly backed the city-centered-growth legal guidelines, so Mr. Sramek’s venture is certain to be controversial. To overcome resistance, the initiative features a lengthy record of guarantees like new roads, cash to put money into downtowns throughout the county and a $400 million fund to assist Solano residents purchase houses.

Mr. Sramek additionally revealed that he hoped to construct straight subsequent to Rio Vista, with a half-mile-wide park separating the previous farming city from the brand new tech metropolis. Renderings that his firm launched this month painting a medium-density neighborhood that’s roughly the other of a subdivision, with a grid of rowhouses that lie a brief stroll from retailers and have quick access to bike lanes and bus stops. He stated the primary part of constructing may accommodate round 50,000 individuals.

Even if the measure will get on the poll and passes, it will likely be one step on a path requiring approval from county, state and federal businesses — an extended record of ifs that explains why giant initiatives are normally measured in many years, not the few years that Mr. Sramek appears to think about.

It’s an important step, nonetheless. Beyond amending the ordinance, a win would stress county officers to work with Mr. Sramek, so opponents are already lining up. A gaggle referred to as Solano Together, a mixture of agricultural and environmental organizations like Greenbelt Alliance, just lately created a web site that characterizes the venture as dangerous sprawl that may destroy farms.

The struggle is one thing of a throwback. Whether it was paving over San Fernando Valley orange groves to construct out Los Angeles or ripping out apricot farms in what’s now Silicon Valley, California turned the nation’s largest state and financial system largely by buying and selling open and agricultural land for inhabitants and improvement.

That shifted within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, when a backlash towards the growth-first regime and its penchant for destroying landscapes helped create fashionable environmentalism. In the half-century since, this flip has been codified in legal guidelines that goal to limit improvement to present cities and their edges. It has protected farms and open house, but additionally helped drive up the price of residing by making housing scarcer and dearer to construct.

Mr. Sramek framed his proposal as a backlash to the backlash, a part of an ideological venture to revive Californians’ urge for food for development. If the state is severe about tackling its dire inexpensive housing downside, he argued, it doesn’t simply need to construct extra housing in locations like San Francisco and its suburbs — it additionally has to increase the city footprint with new cities.

As a matter of coverage, that is laborious to dismiss. This is politics, nonetheless, so the larger query is whether or not voters share his want to return California to an period of enlargement. And whether or not — after six years throughout which Mr. Sramek obfuscated his function in Flannery’s secret land acquisition, together with the corporate’s billionaire backers and true objective, all whereas pursuing farmers with aggressive ways and lawsuits — they discover him reliable.

The Golden Boy vs. 1877

Christine and Dan Mahoney’s home seems onto a barn that claims 1877, the 12 months Ms. Mahoney’s great-grandfather constructed it.

When I met the couple for an interview at their home final 12 months, Ms. Mahoney had embellished the eating desk with black-and-white photos of family in button attire and bonnets. Later we drove alongside roads named for her ancestors.

Winding by way of the hills, Ms. Mahoney ticked off parcels that belonged to the household, others that have been owned by neighbors and extra owned by Flannery. When I requested how she discerned the strains of possession in an expanse of yellow grassland, she stated: “You live here a hundred years.”

Mr. Sramek, in the meantime, talks about development in ethical phrases, as if progress and wealth are simpatico and probably the most consequential individuals are those that construct massive issues and a fortune alongside the best way.

Driving close to the Mahoneys’ ranch just lately, by way of the identical yellow hills, he posited that the combination of wealth and innovation that has exploded within the Bay Area has occurred solely a handful of occasions in historical past. (Florence, Paris, London, New York, Chicago and “maybe L.A.” have been some others.) We have been 60 miles from San Francisco in a spot the place the tallest constructions are wind generators, however his message was that the area might be an financial solar, and that bringing extra individuals within the orbit was worthy of the trade-offs.

An immigrant and striver who at 22 was a co-author of a guide referred to as “Racing Towards Excellence,” Mr. Sramek bought his first spurt of publicity at Goldman Sachs, the place the monetary press hailed him as a “Golden Boy” trader and considered it newsworthy when he left, after two years of employment, to chase a much bigger dream in start-ups.

His tech profession was much less glowing. After Goldman, he moved from London to Zurich and began a company schooling firm referred to as Better. It operated for 2 years and prompted a transfer to San Francisco, the place he based a social media firm, Memo, in 2015.

Memo was billed as a higher-minded model of Twitter and won praise from the enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen. That reward was delivered on Twitter as an alternative of Memo, which was just about the story: Memo didn’t rack up customers and shut down after a 12 months.

His failures apart, Mr. Sramek was smitten with the Bay Area’s tradition of artistic capitalism. He was much less enamored with the precise place.

The legendary Silicon Valley was in actuality a bunch of workplace parks and cul-de-sacs the place subdivision-grade houses went for $2 million. The extra picturesque and concrete San Francisco was being consumed by rising rents and their attendant homeless issues.

Complaining about the price of residing, and the area’s lack of ability to repair it, had turn into one thing of a aspect hustle for a lot of Bay Area chief executives. And after Memo, Mr. Sramek began in search of an enormous disruptive thought for them to fund.

“If we go back six or seven years, the popular hit in the press was ‘Silicon Valley is not doing enough in the real world,’” he stated. “And I was sitting there working on this.”

Mr. Sramek likes to fish. The approach he tells it, round 2016 he and his girlfriend (now spouse) began making the one-hour drive from San Francisco to Rio Vista to catch bass on the Sacramento River. One of these journeys, driving previous pastures and grazing sheep, sparked an thought.

“What if you could start from scratch?” he stated.

In a state whose agricultural bounty has traditionally been a operate of transferring water nice distances, the world is one thing of an anachronism. For generations, households just like the Mahoneys have practiced “dryland farming,” which suggests they depend on rain, not irrigation.

The Mahoneys discuss this the identical approach they discuss their land and household: with an emphasis on custom and the romance of continuity. Mr. Sramek described the land as “not prime.”

The phrase angered a number of farmers on the Rio Vista city assembly, however in greenback phrases it’s correct. At the time of Mr. Sramek’s first fishing journey, land within the space was buying and selling round $4,000 an acre — a pittance in contrast with a Central Valley almond orchard (about $10,000 to $55,000 per acre) or a Napa Valley winery (wherever from $50,000 to greater than $500,000 per acre), in accordance with the California chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers.

Mr. Sramek beginning doing analysis and shortly discovered himself immersed in zoning coverage and poring over previous improvement maps dreaming of a start-up metropolis. Investors have been initially reluctant, he stated, so he borrowed $1 million from associates and banks to place a deposit on a handful of properties, then employed consultants and land-use legal professionals to evaluate what it will take to construct there.

By now Mr. Sramek was nicely networked. He had finished a fellowship at Y Combinator, the start-up incubator. He was in a guide membership with companions at Sequoia Capital. He was associates with billionaires like Patrick and John Collison, the sibling founders of the funds firm Stripe.

The Collisons turned two of Flannery’s first traders. Mr. Andreessen and Chris Dixon, additionally of the Andreessen Horowitz enterprise capital agency, joined quickly after, together with Mr. Moritz, who was Sequoia’s chairman. All of them helped Mr. Sramek solicit others.

In a 2017 be aware to potential traders I obtained, Mr. Moritz wrote that if “done right” the venture may assist relieve congestion and housing costs within the Bay Area, and mused concerning the potential to experiment with new sorts of governance. It may be spectacularly worthwhile, he stated: Mr. Moritz estimated that traders may make 10 occasions their cash even when they only bought the land rezoned, and much more if and when it was developed.

Flannery Associates was named for Flannery Road, which borders the primary property Mr. Sramek purchased. Aside from that element and its Delaware incorporation, residents and public officers may discover nearly nothing about its shareholders or intentions. Just that it wished numerous land, didn’t care concerning the worth and was prepared to strong-arm house owners when cash didn’t work.

In addition to working their very own land, many farmers within the space lease parcels the place they develop crops and graze animals. As Flannery consumed an increasing number of property, individuals like Ian Anderson discovered themselves within the uncomfortable place of making an attempt to rebuff its provides for parcels they owned — whereas on the identical time farming land they rented from Flannery.

Mr. Anderson realized how weak he was after an area newspaper quoted him saying that the corporate had begun insisting on short-term leases and that this made it more and more troublesome to farm. Later, Flannery’s lawyer despatched him a letter informing him that it was terminating a number of leases protecting hundreds of acres.

“The Andersons have made it clear that they do not like Flannery,” in accordance with the letter. “The Andersons are of course free to have their opinions, but they cannot expect that Flannery will continue to just be a punching bag and lease property to them.”

Representative John Garamendi, a Democrat from the world, characterised strikes like this as “mobster techniques.” The greater concern was that Flannery’s holdings had grown into an enormous mass that butted towards Travis Air Force Base on three sides.

The proximity to the bottom alarmed each the county and the Department of Defense, which prompted native officers and members of Congress to name for investigations. The investigations elevated the thriller of Flannery Associates right into a mainstay on native TV news.

“The F.B.I. was investigating this, the State Department was investigating this, the Treasury Department was investigating this — all the local electeds were trying to get information and calling their legislators,” stated Representative Mike Thompson, one other Democrat from the world.

The firm remained silent.

Mr. Sramek stated Flannery had operated in secret to stop landowners from jacking up costs, and defended the lawsuits as simply. He argued that whereas some farmers didn’t wish to promote, most had finished so willingly — at costs no different purchaser may supply.

“We paid way over market value, and created hundreds of millionaires in the process,” he stated. “We are glad that we have been able to settle most of our disputes, and we are open to settling the remaining ones.”

A Simple Case of Wealthy Landowners?

By 2023, Mr. Sramek and his traders have been in deep. Flannery had spent some $900 million shopping for 60,000 acres. The first two rounds of funding, at about $10 million every, had ballooned to a number of extra rounds at $100 million every. (Mr. Sramek stated the corporate had now raised “more than $900 million” however wouldn’t be extra particular.)

Big traders begot greater traders, and the record expanded to a roster of Silicon Valley heavyweights together with Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Powell Jobs.

The firm’s provides turned so beneficiant that many farmers determined they couldn’t refuse.

The Mahoneys offered Flannery a number of hundred acres early on. (Their land is owned by a number of completely different entities and laborious to tally general, however within the Nineteen Sixties Ms. Mahoney’s father instructed a newspaper that he had 16,000 acres within the space.) But as Flannery devoured extra of the land round them, Ms. Mahoney stated, she realized that one thing massive was taking place and that their total farming enterprise might be in danger. So the household stopped promoting to Flannery. The firm continued with extra provides, nonetheless, bettering phrases and rising costs to ranges that may have netted tens of tens of millions of {dollars}. The household continued to say no.

Flannery arrived whereas the Mahoneys have been within the midst of transition. Over 150 years, the household’s firm, R. Emigh Livestock, had expanded from two dozen lambs to certainly one of largest sheep farmers in California. Ms. Mahoney’s father was in his 90s (he died final 12 months) and he or she was passing management to her son Ryan, who stated his want was to remain there till he was in his 90s, too.

You wouldn’t comprehend it from her denims or penchant for nostalgia, however Ms. Mahoney had spent her profession working a company, one whose enterprise was elevating lambs and cattle. She was, like Mr. Sramek, a C.E.O.

And after years of forwards and backwards, one factor Flannery’s entreaties had made clear was that there was one property the Mahoneys owned that it coveted above the others: Goose Haven Ranch. But Goose Haven was the one the household was most protecting of. It had been the middle of the lambing operation lengthy sufficient that the street main as much as it was designed for wagon site visitors.

Elsewhere within the county, Flannery had began shopping for into farms by buying shares from members of the family who wished out, then changing into what amounted to unwelcome companions with those who remained. Two of those preparations led to lawsuits between Flannery and the opposite house owners. Both settled, however certainly one of them netted a trove of emails and textual content messages amongst a number of neighbors together with the Mahoneys.

In May, Flannery used these messages to file an antitrust suit towards the Mahoneys and a number of other holdouts. The swimsuit contended that the farmers have been colluding to lift costs, describing them as “wealthy landowners who saw an opportunity to conspire, collude, price fix and illegally overcharge Flannery.” It requested for $510 million in damages.

The criticism describes the messages (like Ms. Mahoney writing to a neighbor, “That’s great that we can support each other!”) as “a smoking gun” proving that the defendants did wish to promote however at even increased costs than Flannery was providing.

In a joint movement to dismiss, legal professionals for the Mahoneys and different defendants described Flannery’s lawsuit as “a ham-fisted intimidation technique” designed to smother them with authorized charges.

Even after being sued, the Mahoneys nonetheless had no thought who Flannery truly was.

The Campaign Apology Tour

In August, The New York Times broke the news of who was behind the purchases. Mr. Sramek confirmed his function, and shortly topped his LinkedIn profile with a brand new title: chief government of California Forever, the corporate’s new title.

He has been in marketing campaign mode ever since, assembly with elected officers, union leaders and environmental teams. California Forever has opened 4 workplaces throughout the county, and Solano’s freeways are actually plastered with California Forever billboards.

In a state the place it may possibly take years to get a duplex permitted, Mr. Sramek appears to have calculated that his venture is just too massive to fail. Developers, planners and legal professionals I spoke to all anticipated the venture to both by no means occur or take at the very least 20 years. Whether out of bluster, delusion or confidence, Mr. Sramek, who just lately purchased a home in close by Fairfield, stated he had promised his spouse that their toddler daughter would begin faculty within the improvement he wished to construct.

He didn’t discover some secret hack that may make California a better place to construct. Rather, he believes the state’s angle towards development is altering. Californians, he thinks, have grown annoyed — with punishing housing prices, with homelessness, with the state’s lack of ability to finish initiatives just like the high-speed rail line that was supposed to attach the Bay Area and Los Angeles however has stalled. So simply possibly his will, and gobs of cash, can create a brand new posture towards development.

“There’s a cultural moment where we realize the pendulum has gone too far,” Mr. Sramek stated. “We can’t say we are about economic opportunity and working-class Californians are leaving the state every year.”

Last 12 months’s occasion in Rio Vista was held on the finish of lambing season in December. Before the assembly, I dropped by a barn with the Mahoneys the place a gaggle of “bummers” — lambs born weak or to overburdened ewes — have been in sawdust pens consuming milk. They can be chops in lower than a 12 months, and Ms. Mahoney cooed to them between my questions.

I requested her a crass however apparent one: why the cash from Mr. Sramek, these tens of tens of millions, wasn’t engaging.

“Everybody has their price, right?” she stated. “I’ve heard that so many times. ‘Everybody has their number — what’s your number?’ I guess I haven’t found it yet.”

“When God calls us home, that’s our number,” Mr. Mahoney joked. “Totally different philosophy.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Sramek returned to the American Legion submit in Rio Vista. This time he had arrived as a part of a kickoff occasion for the poll initiative. Neighbors and protesters had returned however have been prohibited from going inside, the place slides of maps and renderings have been introduced to the press, and particulars about design have been mentioned.

The maps had a curious element: On the sting of the proposed neighborhood’s downtown, was Goose Haven Ranch.

The night time earlier than the assembly, the Mahoneys offered it. They bought about $23 million.