Over the past few years, someone has been buying up nearly every bit of land around Travis Air Force Base in Solano County.
The catch is, the government says it knows almost nothing about the buyer or what they want to do with the land. Now, the feds are investigating.
“We’re as close as a city should be. We keep big swaths of the land open so they can do their mission. We’re very, very careful about (that),” said Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy.
But Moy is extremely worried that a corporation that has bought thousands of acres of land encircling Travis Airforce base could be up to no good.
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“They bought about 50,000 acres of land. They’re the largest landowner in Solano County now,” she said. “They offered money that these people couldn’t refuse. It could be four to five times what you would get on the market.”
Over the past several years a corporation called Flannery Associates LLC has spent nearly $900 million on land around the Air Force base. But nobody knows precisely who they are or what they intend to do with the property.
“The bottom line question — who the hell are these people? We still don’t know,” said U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, whose district includes much of Solano County.
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He said national security could be at risk so the FBI and the Treasury Department are investigating.
“It's very concerning, the land that they have purchased, which is right up against the fence on three sides of the base, positioning whoever is there to be in a place to gain intelligence information, or possibly to disrupt operations,” Garamendi said.
Now, over the past few days Solano County residents have been getting surveys both online and by phone about plans for a ballot initiative to create a new city that would include tens of thousands of new homes, a solar energy farm and 10,000 acres of parks and open space.
“They talked about providing down payment assistance to local residents and give them priority to buy or lease homes in this new project,” said Fairfield resident George Kennedy.
He said he was polled by phone and that the caller claimed the city would feel like a college town, including a new aqueduct system and restore ecological habitats. He says it all sounded way too good to be true.
“It doesn't pass the smell test to me, because everything is so secretive. They’re not being upfront or honest about this at all,” said Kennedy.
“They want to build a city yet they haven’t talked to anybody here about planning about who they are, what they want to do. It's all been secretive,” said Moy.
The mayor said that if the new landowners incorporate their own city, they can rezone the land and issue their own building permits
“They have plenty of land for a city, but they’re in for a fight,” she said. “We need that land around Travis Air Force Base protected.”
Both local and federal leaders say a lot is at stake. Travis is currently transporting munitions to Poland for Ukraine. It’s the busiest transit airport for the U.S. Air Force.
“For an enemy to be able to be right next to the base, to monitor, to listen into the communications, or to possibly disrupt the flow of the equipment. It would certainly be possible to do that if you owned the land adjacent to the fence line of Travis Air Force Base,” said Garamendi.
Garamendi and Moy say they’re determined to figure out who Flannery Associates really is. The corporation’s attorney has gone on record claiming it’s made up of mostly American interests.
“I'm asking them to call me, let’s talk. This is not the way to go about making friends,” said Moy.
Meanwhile the land grab continues. Moy says Flannery just purchased another plot of land that hasn’t even been recorded yet.
