Saronic picks Texas over Solano County, taking an estimated 10,000 jobs

Solano supervisors reject shipyard fast-track bill; Newsom warns of ‘some reckoning’

Saronic Technologies, which makes autonomous sea vessels, chose Brownsville, Texas, over Solano County, California, for a $3 billion shipyard, taking an estimated 10,000 jobs with it, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company said in June it had picked Texas, about ten months after the Solano County site made the shortlist. The shipyard, code-named Project Gondor, was to stand along the Sacramento River on land held by California Forever, the company that wants to build a walkable community for 400,000 people on about 60,000 acres of farmland a 90-minute drive from San Francisco, with housing, a high-tech manufacturing hub and a shipyard.

The city project is the work of Jan Sramek, 39, who was handling multimillion-dollar trades at Goldman Sachs in London by age 22. His company, California Forever, has raised about $1 billion from investors including venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, assembled top urban planners and won over state leaders including Newsom. The group wants to address a regional housing shortage around San Francisco, as well as a lack of jobs in Solano County, which this year lost a Budweiser brewery and a Valero Energy refinery.

Lobbyists for Sramek were in overdrive in the summer of 2025, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office in his corner as he chased the shipyard prize. “WE HAVE SOME GREAT NEWS!!!!!!,” a Newsom staffer emailed after the site made the shortlist, adding, “We have not had the chance to land a WHALE of a project like this since Tesla more than a decade ago.” Within an hour, Sramek warned of an obstacle: county government red tape. When Solano County made the shortlist last August, Sramek pushed for special legislation to fast-track the project, arguing that if wealthy cities like San Francisco and Cupertino could “use special legislation to bring about stadiums and office jobs,” Solano County should do the same for blue-collar jobs. State lawmakers worked up a bill but wanted the county to sign off. At a tense board meeting, Mashburn chastised California Forever for the rush but voted to endorse a compromise bill. “As much as I have to throw up in my mouth a little bit and swallow that…I have to say that yes, I want us to be able to have a voice,” he said. As Saronic weighed sites in 2025, Sramek’s deputies also courted local leaders with riverside tours alongside retired military brass.

According to Sramek, the bill fell short for Saronic: despite months of talks between his team, Mashburn and state lawmakers trying to hammer out a better one, Saronic said in June it had picked Texas. “We kept raising our hand and saying, if we don’t pass the legislation, they are going to go to Brownsville,” Sramek said, “but there wasn’t the political will to get it done.” A spokeswoman for Saronic didn’t respond to requests for comment. Dee Dee Myers, director of Newsom’s business and economic development office and a former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said Saronic “is very bullish on California but they had a tight timeline and they could move more quickly in Texas.”

After Saronic’s decision, Newsom’s office pressed for new legislation to fast-track a future shipyard at the site so the state would be ready for the next opportunity. Mashburn was expected to support it at an August board meeting, but he didn’t, and said the county still felt disrespected. “We’re the toddlers in the room and they’re patting us on the head,” he said. The supervisors voted the measure down, opting to study the issue instead. The next day, at a news conference at an abandoned shipyard, Newsom publicly rebuked Solano County’s leadership. “Continue to do what you’ve done, you’ll get what you got,” the governor said. “It’s easy to punt something, but there’s going to be some reckoning.”

Mashburn, 59, a cowboy-hat-wearing Republican county supervisor and descendant of local farmers, has been the most prominent opponent of California Forever’s plans, complaining that the push for the shipyard was being “crammed down our throat.” Emails obtained by The Wall Street Journal show relations soured to the point where county officials appear more inclined to block the project than negotiate. By April, county officials were feeling sidelined. When a Sramek deputy reminded then-County Administrator Bill Emlen of six months of meetings with him, Mashburn and others, receipts attached, Emlen shot back: “Sending invites to public briefings does not substitute for a seat at the table. Our role is not to ‘get out of the way.’” In one email, Sramek wrote that the county’s plan to review the shipyard was “off the mark not by a year, but by several years.”

At odds with the county, Sramek found an ally in Bret Prebula, 43, a former golf pro who is city manager of Suisun City, one of Solano County’s poorest communities. Prebula saw a rare opportunity for his 4-square-mile city, which has a large Black population and has long felt overlooked in Solano County. In early 2025, he proposed expanding Suisun City’s borders by 35 square miles to annex a significant portion of California Forever’s land. For Prebula, the move meant vital city revenue; for Sramek, a way around the county’s strict rules on development outside city limits. “He’s one of the hardest chess players I’ve ever had to play against,” Prebula said of Sramek. “It’s fun for me. I’m like, all right, game on.” In June 2025, Sramek offered Suisun City a $55,000 grant for the local July 4 fireworks celebration and other events threatened by a budget shortfall, and offered to buy $1.5 million in downtown properties to help close the gap, emails show. Prebula wrote to Justin Esch, Sramek’s head of business development, “A new fire house would be nice, just a thought,” and Esch responded, “Bret—If a new fire station is a top priority, let’s talk about it.” Soon after, they struck a deal: California Forever would cover the city’s project-related costs and pay it $10 million if the annexation is finalized.

Opponents cried foul. Jim DeKloe, a community-college professor and local Sierra Club leader, called the arrangement a “weasel tactic” intended to bypass a countywide vote, dubbed Suisun City a “rogue” actor and called Prebula an opportunist who “wants to parlay this into his next job at a bigger city.” The annexation requires a tax-sharing agreement with Solano County, one Mashburn has said publicly the county can’t be forced to make. “What’s happening here is not just local friction,” Prebula complained in an email to state officials. “It is a clear example of how counties can weaponize process and inertia.”

The shipyard fight is the latest chapter in a conflict that predates it. The Journal reported that from the start, Sramek’s “secretive, aggressive” campaign to buy up 60,000 acres for a master-planned community for 400,000 people enraged locals, especially after California Forever sued multigenerational farming families, alleging they conspired to inflate land prices. Sramek called opponents the “70-year-old Sierra Club type.” At a public town-hall meeting, one resident told him, “You need to work on your soft skills.” In 2024, California Forever spent millions on a ballot measure to exempt the project from the county’s antisprawl rules, which require a countywide vote to develop farmland outside city boundaries. It pulled the measure months before the election, when polling showed it was headed for defeat. Afterward, Sramek and Mashburn pledged in a joint statement to slow down and work together, with Mashburn conceding “that we cannot solve our jobs, housing, and energy challenges if every project takes a decade or more to break ground.” That arrangement, which the Journal described as a fragile detente, faced its first test in Saronic’s planned shipyard.

Sramek casts the standoff as a fight against forces that have priced people out of housing and stalled local economies. “The battle for the future of California is being fought in Solano County,” he said. Opponents view it as a tech-billionaire land grab. “I call it broligarch city because it’s really tech bros behind this,” said DeKloe. Former County Supervisor Jim Spering faults both sides: county leaders like Mashburn aren’t forward-looking and don’t know how to cut deals that would help the region, he said, and Sramek is one of those “dreamer developers that don’t understand that you’ve got to build a relationship with the community” before “telling them what you want to do.” “If I asked you to make a list of 10 things you could do wrong, I’ll bet you they did every one,” he said. Steering his Jeep Wagoneer down a farm road through his company’s land on a recent afternoon, Sramek said he thinks the project would have faced stiff opposition no matter the approach, but he acknowledged he could have done some things better. “We could have taken a little bit of time on the front end,” he said.

Pulling into California Forever’s unmarked office, Sramek called the supervisors’ vote a speed bump. The emails obtained by the Journal show California Forever boosters fear Mashburn has another bullet in the chamber, and the company still needs the county’s cooperation: the Suisun City annexation requires a tax-sharing agreement with Solano County, one Mashburn has said publicly the county can’t be forced to make.