California Forever Eyes New Trump Initiative to Bring Its Shipbuilding Plans to Life

California Forever, the company behind a plan to build a new city in Solano County, announced its latest proposal on Thursday to make progress on another ambitious initiative: revitalizing the area’s shipbuilding industry with the goal of creating thousands of jobs.

The real estate development corporation and Nimitz Group, which owns Vallejo’s Mare Island, are urging the federal government to designate the California Delta a “Maritime Prosperity Zone,” a designation created by President Donald Trump last year. The zone would span the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers through Suisun and San Pablo bays.

“This proposal responds directly to the national imperative to rebuild America’s maritime industrial base,” said Jan Sramek, founder & CEO of California Forever. “Solano County, and the broader California Delta region, are uniquely positioned to become a bridge between the past and the future of shipbuilding in California.”

The announcement comes as California Forever continues to pursue a deal for Suisun City to annex much of its land where it intends to build a mega-development in rural Solano County and develop a 2,100-acre advanced manufacturing operation nearby.

The billionaire-backed company, one of the largest landowners in the county, said designating the delta area a Maritime Prosperity Zone could mean tax incentives and coordinated federal support, along with long-term maritime and industrial investment for the region.

California Forever first announced its interest in shipbuilding last March after Trump formed the White House Office of Shipbuilding.

In April, he signed an executive order for the purpose of “restoring America’s maritime dominance,” which called for creating a framework for Maritime Prosperity Zones and an action plan to build up shipbuilding capacity and the maritime industry.

The group has eyed Collinsville, a small town in an unincorporated area across the delta from Pittsburg, as a potential shipbuilding site. But partners of this week’s proposal say it extends beyond that effort.

“With something like shipbuilding, you really want to catalyze the entire region,” said Chris Rico, the president and CEO of Solano Economic Development Corporation, which is backing the proposal.

“If you’re looking at Collinsville … they understand that they’re going to need Benicia and Vallejo and even across the water in Pittsburg and Bay Point and Antioch. They all rise together.”

That appears to address pushback California Forever got when it announced plans for the “Solano Shipyard” last year. While the county has been supportive of expanding the shipbuilding industry, it told the organization at the time that it needed more information before it could support the project.

Some residents have pushed for investment to restore such operations to go toward Mare Island, which was the first naval base on the Pacific Ocean and operated for nearly 150 years before it was decommissioned in 1996.

Rico said building up the maritime industry throughout the county could create thousands of jobs in shipbuilding as well as industries along the supply chain. Currently, he said, 100,000 residents leave Solano County for work.

“To have the possibility to have those kinds of living-wage jobs here where people could live and work close to home, that’s really what we’ve been driving towards,” he said.

It’s not yet clear what the exact incentives of a designated Maritime Prosperity Zone would be, but Trump’s April order said the zones would provide “opportunities to incentivize and facilitate domestic and allied investment in United States maritime industries and waterfront communities.”

The zones are expected to operate similarly to Opportunity Zones, which spur investment in specific low-income areas by offering tax incentives to investors. Trump’s executive order suggests that places in a Maritime Prosperity Zone would also get regulatory relief from the federal government.

Bipartisan members of Congress have also introduced the SHIPS for America Act, with the goal of revitalizing shipbuilding and strengthening U.S. maritime security. That bill would establish a “Maritime Security Trust Fund,” which would reinvest maritime fees into “security programs and infrastructure supporting maritime commerce.”

“There’s been an acknowledgement across the aisle that [the U.S.] not building ships is a national security issue, so we’re building on the backs of that work,” Rico said.

According to Corey Cook, the vice president and CEO of Cal Poly Maritime Academy in Vallejo, the proposal this week highlights the Bay Area’s interest in being at the forefront of that work. He said the region has a long history of shipbuilding. According to California Forever, Northern California supported more than 220,000 shipbuilding jobs during World War II.

“There are active shipyards still throughout the Bay Area. We want to position ourselves so that once the Department of Commerce comes out with guidelines around the Maritime Prosperity Zones, that we’re ready to articulate our region’s interests in being designated,” he said.

The university, which is supporting California Forever’s proposal, expects to be a partner in preparing the workforce that a larger maritime industry will require, Cook said.

“We prepare Coast Guard-licensed deck officers and engineers. We also prepare students who are going to end up operating shipyards and can be involved in logistics, planning and ports and the whole realm of maritime operations,” he told KQED.

Cook said the school would be looking to partner with community colleges and other California State University campuses, along with K-12 schools.