加利福尼亚州索兰诺县——2025年夏天，硅谷支持的企业家扬·斯拉梅克（Jan Sramek）的游说团队全力运转。加州州长加文·纽森（Gavin Newsom）办公室力挺他，斯拉梅克正追逐一个目标：在他计划从零开始建造的城市旁建设一个价值30亿美元的造船厂。
SOLANO COUNTY, Calif.—In the summer of 2025, lobbyists for Silicon Valley-backed entrepreneur Jan Sramek were in overdrive. With Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office in his corner, Sramek was chasing a prize: a $3 billion shipyard beside the city he wants to build from scratch here.
“我们有非常好的消息!!!!!!，”纽森办公室的一名工作人员在该项目入围名单后发邮件称。“自特斯拉十多年前以来，我们还没有机会促成如此庞大的WHALE级项目。”然而，兴奋未能持续。仅一小时后，斯拉梅克警告称存在障碍：县政府的繁文缛节。十个月后，造船公司Saronic Technologies选择了得克萨斯州的布朗斯维尔，带走约1万个就业岗位。
“WE HAVE SOME GREAT NEWS!!!!!!,” a Newsom staffer emailed after the site made the shortlist. “We have not had the chance to land a WHALE of a project like this since Tesla more than a decade ago.”The excitement didn’t last. Within an hour, Sramek warned of an obstacle: county government red tape. Ten months later, the shipmaker, Saronic Technologies, chose Brownsville, Texas, taking with it an estimated 10,000 jobs.
斯拉梅克现年39岁，并非首次涉足大交易。22岁时，他在伦敦高盛处理过数百万美元的交易。如今，他试图打造一种可步行的郊区乌托邦，包含住宅、高科技制造中心和造船厂，距离旧金山约90分钟车程。他的公司California Forever已从包括风险投资公司Andreessen Horowitz和LinkedIn联合创始人Reid Hoffman在内的投资者那里筹集约10亿美元，聘请了顶尖城市规划师，并赢得了包括纽森在内的州级领导人的支持。
Sramek, 39 years old, is no stranger to big deals. By 22, he was handling multimillion-dollar trades at Goldman Sachs in London. Now, he is trying to build a kind of walkable suburban utopia, with housing, a high-tech manufacturing hub and a shipyard, a 90-minutes’ drive from San Francisco. 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.