California Forever mulls shipbuilding as anchor for new city

President Donald Trump wants the nation to build more ships. And California Forever, backers of a proposed city in Solano County, wants to help build them.

The Fairfield-based firm backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has proposed a shipyard on 1,400 acres near Collinsville, where the Sacramento River ends in tidal Delta estuaries, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

Supporters say the shipyard could take advantage of tax credits and federal infrastructure funding from an executive order Trump is expected to sign this week. His “Make Shipbuilding Great Again” order calls for an overhaul of the U.S. maritime industry, according to USNI News.

Rio Vista Mayor Edwin Okamura posted on Facebook that he and the city manager had met with retired military leaders, county officials and representatives from California Forever to discuss the proposed shipyard.

“We are very early in the process, and are working with elected officials and local communities to explore how we can best use these assets to support American Sailors and stimulate economic growth in our cities, county and broader region,” an unidentified California Forever spokesperson said in a statement.

“Bringing this industry back to Solano County will require all of us to work together on this generational opportunity.”

Trump’s order calls for creating an Office of Shipbuilding, which he said would “resurrect” the American shipbuilding industry and provide tax incentives to bring it “home to America.”

“We used to make so many ships,” Trump said this month. “We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact.”

It could also impact plans by California Forever, whose controversial proposal to build a utopian city of 400,000 residents on secretly bought farmland stalled last summer after a county report said the project that was to have gone before voters last fall “may not be financially feasible.”

A ballot initiative had been slated to go before Solano County voters in November, but was pulled last July after months of poor polling and public skepticism. California Forever now plans to go before voters next year, after agreeing to cooperate with county officials on an environmental impact report.

In January, Suisun City voted to consider annexing California Forever’s land, shifting part of the development from county to city land in an end-run around voter approval requirements.

The shipbuilding proposal is also expected to be met with strong resistance from the project’s opponents, who already have voiced concerns over the environmental impacts of the plan, according to the Business Times.

The California Forever spokesperson said the shipbuilding operation falls in line with a 1989 county study that identified the southern Montezuma Hills as the “largest vacant site on the West Coast currently approved for heavy industry or marine terminal use, and the only one in California of more than a few hundred acres.”

The county supervisors zoned more than 1,400 acres for maritime industrial uses in response, and included the industrial designation in its 2008 general plan. California Forever said Solano County is uniquely positioned to rebuild the country’s naval power, developing shipbuilding, ship repair and related maritime industries.

— Dana Bartholomew