By John King : sfchronicle – excerpt

Most Bay Area residents only know Mountain House by what they glimpse when descending Altamont Pass into the San Joaquin Valley: row after row of close-packed houses stretching north from Interstate 205.

They haven’t visited the large orderly neighborhoods with blocks of faux-historic houses clustered around community parks and elementary schools, or the old-fashioned town hall and library next to, what else, Central Community Park. They almost certainly don’t recall the rhetoric when Mountain House was conceived decades ago — assurances that this would blossom as a self-contained place with housing and jobs in holistic harmony…

But if such rosy visions sound familiar, here’s why: They’re uncannily similar to the rhetoric being used for a proposed “new city” in Solano County by California Forever, a company that is backed by some of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest investors…

“When you lay these plans out, you have to remember you’re in the permission-seeking business,” said Gerry Kamilos, the developer of Mountain House’s College Park neighborhood. “Economic cycles, political cycles, cultural changes — they all affect how the plan evolves.”… (more)