Officials worry as mystery company buys land encircling Bay Area military base – By Katie Dowd (SFGate) / July 24, 2023
Since 2018, one company has been methodically buying up the available land around Travis Air Force Base. The transactions have caught the eye of the U.S. government — but no one can figure out who the mystery buyer actually is.
In early July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Flannery Associates has spent almost $1 billion acquiring land that surrounds the base. Despite being in touching distance to the edge of Fairfield’s urban center, the base itself is still mostly surrounded by agricultural land. Public records show Flannery Associates is now the biggest landowner in Solano County, with 52,000 acres acquired, the Journal reported. Most of the land the company has bought is south of the base, covering swaths of the agricultural and marshy area down to the Sacramento River in Rio Vista.
“Nobody can figure out who they are,” Rio Vista Mayor Ronald Kott told the Journal. “Whatever they’re doing — this looks like a very long-term play.”
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