In an overcrowded tiny house market, Portugal’s Madeiguincho offers something a little different with its wooden models that are handcrafted by experienced carpenters. Its latest creation, the Atlantica, allows a family of four to escape the bustle of the city and live off-the-grid amongst nature.
The Atlantica has a length of 7 m (23 ft) and its living space is extended with a porch area that has a ramp for access. The home also features generous glazing, as well as some shutters, and drop-down tables outside the kitchen for serving food during parties or simply dining outside. The interior is finished in timber and ply, and looks attractive and light-filled.
Double glass doors open onto the living room. This includes a sofa, a very small wood-burning stove that should nonetheless be sufficient for heating the entire home in the winter, and a ceiling fan to help keep it cool in warmer months (the home’s location under some trees will also help shade it).
Nearby is the kitchen, which features a breakfast bar for two, plus a lot of shelving and some cabinetry. A sink and a two-burner propane-powered stove are visible. Presumably, a fridge/freezer and oven are tucked away too, since this is a full-time residence for a family, though the promo shots don’t show such things.
The Atlantica’s kitchen features a breakfast bar for two people
João Carranca
The Atlantica’s kitchen connects to its bathroom. This contains a sink, shower, and composting toilet, plus a glass door that offers a secondary entrance into the home (there are also curtains for privacy). Though unusual, Madeiguincho often installs second entrances in its bathrooms, such as in its Raposa.
Over on the opposite side of the tiny house’s ground floor to the bathroom is its master bedroom. Though it looks quite snug, it has built-in storage and a double bed.
Additionally, there are two loft-style bedrooms with low ceilings in the Atlantica. One is located above the bathroom and is accessed by a fixed wooden ladder. It has space for a double bed, plus it’s topped by a skylight. The second loft space, meanwhile, is over the downstairs master bedroom and is reached by removable ladder. This again has a double bed, but lacks a skylight. Both bedrooms have neat little porthole-style windows.
The Atlantica’s living area includes a tiny wood-burning stove for warmth and a ceiling fan to help keep it cool
João Carranca
The Atlantica is located somewhere in rural Portugal in the middle of a pine forest. It’s power comes from a roof-based solar panel array that’s hooked up to batteries. We’ve no word on the price of this one.
We often associate Mint Tiny House Company with massive models like the Canada Goose. However, with its Loft Ruby Edition, the company has created a tiny house that is a more manageable size, while maintaining an impressive capacity to sleep up to six people in comfort.
The Loft Ruby Edition is based on a triple-axle trailer and has a length of 34 ft (10.36 m), which is a common size in North American tiny house nowadays – though smaller models are definitely still being built, such as Modern Tiny Living’s recent Cercaux, which has a length of just 20 ft (6 m).
The home is finished in board and batten engineered wood siding and topped by a metal roof, with generous glazing that helps fill it with daylight. The interior measures 386 sq ft (35.86 sq m), much of which is taken up by an open living area that includes the living room, kitchen, and dining area.
The living room is quite snug in this model and fits a sofa, as well as a small coffee table and wall-mounted TV. There’s also some storage that’s built into the staircase. Nearby is the kitchen. This contains a farmhouse-style sink with three-burner propane-powered stove, an oven, a fridge/freezer, space for a washer/dryer, a microwave, and a lot of cabinetry, including a large pantry area.
The Loft Ruby Edition’s interior measures 386 sq ft (35.86 sq m)
Mint Tiny House Company
The bathroom is accessed by a sliding door from the kitchen and looks relatively spacious for a tiny house. It features a flushing toilet, a vanity sink, plus a large shower with a small built-in seat, as well as some storage.
There are three bedrooms in the Loft Ruby Edition. The master bedroom is situated downstairs on the opposite side of the home to the bathroom and has enough room for a queen-sized bed, plus a lot of built-in storage space. It also has ample headroom to stand upright, which is still a luxury in a tiny house. Additionally, the same storage space that’s built into the home’s staircase and accessed from the living room is accessible from here.
There are also two upstairs bedrooms. These are typical loft-based tiny house spaces with low ceilings. The sleeping quarters situated above the bathroom are accessed by a removable ladder that’s stowed near the pantry area when not in use and there’s ample space for a pair of double beds or a queen or king-sized bed.
The second loft bedroom is reached by storage-integrated staircase and is similar to the other one but has a large storage unit installed.
The Loft Ruby Edition’s interior decor is enlivened by wooden beams
Mint Tiny House Company
The Loft Ruby Edition is currently up for sale and has a starting price of CAD148,500 (roughly US$108,000).
The Elsie is a well-proportioned tiny house that has a spacious interior suitable for a small family to live in comfort. It includes lots of storage space, as well as a novel loft bedroom with a lowered standing platform that allows its owners to get into bed without crawling.
The Elsie, by Indigo River Tiny Homes, has a length of 34 ft (10.36 m), which is about average for a North American tiny house nowadays, and is based on a triple-axle trailer. It’s part of Indigo River Tiny Homes’ Homesteader series and is finished in cedar. It also sports two exterior storage areas.
The interior layout looks open for a tiny house and not too fussy, flattering the small space available. The home is entered through two French doors, which open onto the kitchen. This consists of an oven with induction stove, a sink, a fridge/freezer and a lot of storage space, including cabinetry and a pull-out pantry. There’s a small dining table nearby too.
The living room is adjacent and features a sofa bed, an entertainment center and TV, plus a small coffee table. Over on the other side of the tiny house is the bathroom. This contains a flushing toilet, a vanity sink, and a shower, plus a little more storage.
The Elsie’s French doors open onto the kitchen, which looks quite open and spacious for a tiny house
Indigo River Tiny Homes
The Elsie has two bedrooms, both of which are upstairs and situated at opposite sides of the home to offer some separation.
The main bedroom is accessed from the living room by a storage-integrated staircase. As mentioned, Indigo River Tiny Homes has installed a lowered platform, like the one on the Kererū Tiny House. This allows anyone measuring up to 6.2 ft (1.89 m) in height to comfortably stand upright to get into bed and/or get dressed. It sounds like a minor addition but should make a significant difference in comfort compared to crawling on your knees.
The second bedroom is a standard loft-style tiny house space that’s accessed from a storage-integrated staircase on the opposite side of the house, above the bathroom. This one doesn’t have the lowered platform.
The Elsie’s secondary bedroom includes some storage space
Indigo River Tiny Homes
The Elsie gets power from a standard RV-style hookup, though off-the-grid options are also available. We’ve no word on the price of this model.
In the days after former President Donald Trump declared that he’d make in vitro fertilization more accessible for Americans, the anti-abortion movement went to work. The activist Lila Rose urged her social-media followersnot to vote for Trump, equating his enthusiasm for IVF with support for abortion. The Pro-Life Action League asked Trump to walk back his remarks, citing the “hundreds of thousands” of embryos that would be destroyed. Meanwhile, Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, tagged Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, in a social-media post arguing a different point: that the policy would “be encouraging families to delay childbirth.” Supporting IVF, in other words, would give women a free pass to put off child-rearing until they felt like it.
Anti-abortion groups have long had an uneasy relationship with IVF, because embryos are sometimes destroyed in the course of treatment, which is a problem if you believe that embryos are people. After Trump promised that he would make the government or insurers cover the cost of the procedure, though, a different anti-IVF argument has gained ground among some anti-abortion activists. IVF isn’t just destroying life, they say—it’s destroying the sanctity of the American nuclear-family unit.
The technological marvel of growing embryos in a petri dish has opened up biological parenthood to new groups of people, and not just those dealing with more traditional reproductive challenges. It’s helped enable a large cohort of women to have their first child in their late 30s and beyond. That change, alongside growing numbers of single women and LGBTQ couples seeking to have genetically related kids of their own, has helped fuel a veritable IVF boom. And IVF, in turn, has radically expanded the American notion of family beyond the default of mom, dad, and children.
Some of the most vocal opponents of IVF also oppose that changing definition of family. After Trump’s endorsement of IVF for all, Katy Faust, an anti-abortion activist, posted on X that “when you vote to ‘protect’ or subsidize #IVF, you are endorsing the manufacture of intentionally fatherless and motherless children”—that is, she suggests, children whose parents are single or queer. Hawkins told me in an interview that waiting to have a child until it becomes biologically challenging is a choice women aren’t entitled to make, and going through IVF asserts the same problematic bodily autonomy that abortion does. “We’re commodifying children,” she said.
Read: An unexpected window into the Trump campaign
But the movement to limit IVF has far less support than the anti-abortion movement. In a Pew Research Center poll published in May, 63 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they support IVF, as did 60 percent of those who said abortion should be illegal. “As the reproductive-justice movement has become more mainstream, so has the idea that, not just that you have the right to abortion, but also that you also have the right to have children,” Lisa Campo-Engelstein, the chair of bioethics at the University of Texas Medical Branch, told me. “For the conservatives, that makes them very worried.” (Hawkins told me exactly that: “Children are not a right. They are a privilege.”) So now some activists are telling a different story about IVF: that it’s expanded the ability to have a family to specific groups of people who, in their view, shouldn’t.
The roots of this tactic go back more than half a century. Even before the birth of the first test-tube baby, conservative thinkers were distinctly preoccupied with what IVF might do to the structure of the American family. IVF was originally conceived to serve a very narrow medical purpose: allowing women with blocked fallopian tubes to get pregnant. Writing in 1972, the physician and bioethicist Leon Kass surmised that once IVF was achieved, nothing would limit it to infertile married couples. “Why stop at couples?” he wrote. “What about single women, widows, or lesbians?” As the fertility historian Margaret Marsh and the gynecologist Wanda Ronner wrote in their IVF history, The Pursuit of Parenthood, “Conservatives were almost universally opposed to in vitro fertilization as a threat to the moral order.” After IVF arrived in the United States in 1981, Kass’s predictions proved true: IVF became just one of the many tools that has removed barriers to parenthood for more diverse groups of people, alongside changes to adoption laws and less invasive technologies such as intrauterine insemination.
Anti-abortion activists maintained an uneasy peace with these new reproductive technologies until earlier this year, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children. In the aftermath of the ruling, clinics in the state stopped providing the treatment for fear of legal liability. Defense of IVF on both sides of the aisle came swiftly. In Alabama, lawmakers passed legislation protecting clinics. Republican lawmakers tripped over themselves to pledge their support, even as those in the Senate blocked Democrats’ IVF-protection bill twice.
Read: Christian parents have a blueprint for IVF
The anti-abortion movement has long claimed to be defenders of American families, and in recent weeks, some members have called on Trump to reduce the costs associated with childbirth instead of IVF. Since the Alabama ruling, they’ve also had to defend their objections to technology that has helped many people build families. Some have argued that fertility treatment harms women and families, because it can be sold as a miracle cure rather than the crapshoot that it is. Behind the scenes, the anti-abortion movement has been circulating talking points and policy recommendations designed to curb the practice of IVF. They’ve already had one major win, when the Southern Baptist Convention condemned IVF at its annual meeting this June.
These advocates are right about what’s at stake: Making IVF more affordable would expand even further the ranks of American parents. Most Americans who give birth through IVF are white. And rich, married, and heterosexual people tend to have the easiest access. The majority of people do not have benefits that cover fertility treatments, which average close to $50,000 per patient. Only about half of large employers offered fertility coverage in 2022, and fewer than half of states mandate coverage. And many fertility benefits that do exist exclude access to treatment for LGBTQ and single people. In Arkansas, a state mandate requires that eggs be fertilized with a spouse’s sperm to get coverage. Even deep-blue New York City’s health-insurance plan, which covers IVF for all employees, doesn’t cover costs associated with egg or sperm donation or with surrogacy, which LGBTQ couples or single people might require to start a family. Just this past March, the Department of Defense extended its own benefits policy after a lawsuit charged that the policy was discriminatory because it offered benefits only to married, heterosexual people.
Read: More people should be talking about IVF the way Tim Walz is
Trump’s vision of fertility care for all could upend this status quo, making IVF benefits universal, rather than a perk of who you work for or what state you live in. It could make parenthood more accessible to people who aren’t married and white and wealthy and heterosexual. And for anti-abortion activists, that might be the biggest threat of all.
In response to the return to large-scale peer-to-peer warfare, Anduril has unveiled its new Barracuda family of autonomous cruise missiles, which can be built to “hyper-scale” for intelligent swarm attacks against hardened targets.
The current geopolitical situation and conflicts in several parts of the globe have shown that the decades of counterinsurgency warfare after the Cold War is giving way to a return to the threat of massed armed forces facing off against one another.
This is more than just a serious threat to world peace, it also highlights a major shortcoming for Western military powers. As the aid sent to help Ukraine fight the Russian invasion has shown, Western weapon stockpiles may include some remarkable state-of-the-art hardware, but those stockpiles aren’t very deep and would be rapidly depleted in a serious conflict.
According to Anduril, the problem is so severe that the West’s reserves of precision weapons could be exhausted in a matter of days. If this wasn’t bad enough, such precision munitions are no longer designed to act alone. They are becoming increasingly autonomous and designed to work together as a team, independently deciding which targets to hit and which weapon to do the hitting.
What this all boils down to is that the West needs to build up its stockpiles. And fast.
The Barracuda family of three variants of Autonomous Air Vehicles (AAVs) is designed to address this.
The Barracuda 100, Barracuda 250, and Barracuda 500 are air-breathing, software-defined expendable AAVs, with each variant having increased size, payload, and range. Each variant’s number indicates the turbojet-powered missile’s range in nautical miles: 100 nm (115 miles, 185 km), 250 nm (287 miles, 463 km), and 500 nm (575 miles, 926 km). They have a payload capacity ranging to over 100 lb (45 kg), can handle maneuvers at 5 gs, and can loiter for 120 minutes for direct, stand-in, and stand-off attacks.
However, what sets the Barracuda family apart is that all share a common design that is compatible with a range of mission payloads. This configuration is intended to simplify not only the missile’s architecture, but to make it easier, cheaper, and faster to produce in large numbers.
Instead of being highly complex and requiring specialized tools and technicians to put them together, the Barracuda has a software-defined modular design that, according to the company, allows it to be assembled in half the time of conventional missiles, while requiring 95% fewer tools and 50% fewer parts. Overall, this makes it 30% cheaper to make and suitable for mass production, including short-term surge demand.
Not only does the Barracuda only need fewer than 10 tools to put it together, it doesn’t require the specially trained technicians that other missiles require. This means it can be built on standard automotive and consumer electronic factory lines, which gets through the bottleneck plaguing modern defense industries that have merged into a handful of companies. In addition, the Barracuda uses off-the-shelf components for its subsystems, which helps with logistics.
The Barracuda uses Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy software, which allows it to be both collaborative and autonomous. This means it doesn’t just home in on a target, it can be deployed in intelligent swarms to work with other missiles and piloted aircraft, making decisions and delegating tasks, such as which missile will be best suited to taking out which target, whether to head in or loiter, act as decoys, and in what sequence the attack should be carried out for maximum effect.
“That package can deliver the mission effect that you want, without having to bundle all of that into one air vehicle, and then radically drive up the cost per round of every single vehicle,” said a company spokesman.
You can build a reminder and task management system for yourself, and use a service that works for your team. But it might not be easy to get your family members or friends to use the same task management app. iOS app Karo (which means “do it” in Hindi) aims to solve the problem even if the other person doesn’t use the app.
This isn’t Mustafa Yusuf‘s first task management product. The India-based developer also develops another to-do app called Tasks, for more complex task management. Yusuf told TechCrunch that he developed Karo because other apps didn’t allow him the flexibility of assigning tasks to people in your address book.
“No app allowed me to simply delegate and track tasks I had for people in my contacts. For example, my accountant, sister, plumber, or electrician. I just want to send them a task, have them receive it on the apps they already use (WhatsApp/Messages), and get notified when they act on it. If they don’t, instead of me nagging them, I’d prefer the app to send automatic reminders,” he said.
Yusuf said that prior to creating the app, he had to manually remind them through WhatsApp or other chat apps to complete a task. Plus, because there was no tracking system, even he forgot tasks.
Image Credits: Karo
The app and the features
Karo lets you input tasks easily in an interface that looks like a conversation in a messaging app. You can use natural language to add tasks as the app recognizes identifiers, such as “tomorrow” and “10 am.” It then automatically creates a task with a deadline if you mention a specific time and date. Plus, you can @mention a particular person to assign a task to them. Alternatively, there are buttons for adding date, time, and a contact to a task as well.
Users can optionally attach an image, a video, a PDF document or a voice note to a task. And because it’s 2024, there’s an AI angle too. Users can invoke Karo AI to break down larger tasks into smaller tasks. They can also ask AI to help them plan a trip and list to-dos.
Once you assign a task to someone, they get a notification on Karo if they have the app. Otherwise, the app first sends them a chat on WhatsApp, and if that fails, a reminder via text message. For scheduled tasks, the person gets a reminder when the task is due as well as two and four days after the due date. For non-scheduled tasks the app sends a reminder two, four, and six days after the task has been created.
On the main screen, tasks are sorted by contact. If you tap on someone’s name, it opens up a conversation interface with them where you can see past tasks and add more tasks. The app also has an activity tab where you can see updates about all tasks that you are involved in.
While teams and small organizations might use dedicated solutions for task management, in a country like India, a lot of businesses don’t have a proper system in place. They prefer to handle tasks in WhatsApp groups directly. Yusuf thinks Karo’s integration with the platform and its ability to create groups within the app will appeal to WhatsApp users.
He mentioned that some firms are already using the app for their work. For instance, a dry fruit distributor in Mumbai uses Karo to assign packaging and delivery tasks to their team. Folks on the team check off tasks through WhatsApp. Yusuf added that this could be useful for study groups or book clubs.
Karo is available for free, but you have to pay if you want to use features like groups, themes, and attachments. The app is originally priced at $4.99 per month, $39.99 per year, and $99.99 for lifetime unlock with introductory launch offers on all plans.
Yusuf is planning to make an Android version available to users soon. But he thinks that even if people don’t use the app, the ability to send your contacts a reminder without them being on the app is the main draw.
Text description provided by the architects. Architectural Concept – “A roofed square and a circle” is a wooden house in the Southern Palatinate, which stands as a solitaire on a plot on the edge of a field with a panoramic view of the Kalmit. The title comes from the timber builder, who said: “It’s just a roofed square” – and ultimately that’s exactly what it is.
The client wanted a house in which life could take place on one level – and therefore without barriers. Instead of many individual rooms, everything was to be open and communicative, yet with the possibility of creating places of retreat through simple partitions. The design approach was therefore to zone the area under the pitched roof with just a single element – the core, which leaves the rest of the interior free to be used. In accordance with the client’s wishes, the core is both a separating and connecting element with four large sliding doors, which relate the public and private areas in the house to each other and at the same time accommodate all the ancillary rooms. By cleverly balancing the ridge height and roof pitch, an additional bathroom and two small rooms could be created on the upper floor, making the house usable as a family home.
For the outdoor area, the wish was to leave the garden as natural as possible and only add a terrace. The client was quickly convinced by the idea of an island in a sea of flowers, a terrace that extends out over the meadow. In keeping with the motif of the island, it is set slightly apart from the house as a geometrically independent element.
Construction and Materials – The timber frame construction consists of a total of 28 prefabricated wall, ceiling and roof elements, which are connected with Hilti HCW anchors and fixed to the floor slab. The high degree of prefabrication ensured a short construction time as well as precise and efficient construction. The outer shell of the house is formed by a rear-ventilated wooden façade made of pre-greyed Nordic spruce, which is mounted vertically and visibly screwed. Inside the house, light-colored interior walls and an exposed wooden ceiling create a cozy atmosphere. Cellulose was used as blown-in insulation for both the exterior walls and the raftered roof to ensure optimum thermal insulation.
Sustainability and Energy Efficiency – As a KFW Efficiency House 40 EE, the building technology concept relies holistically on sustainable energy sources. A central component is the use of environmental heat through a combination of geothermal energy and heat pump technology. The concept is also supplemented by a photovoltaic system on the roof and a decentralized ventilation system with heat recovery. The combination of a well-insulated building envelope and high-quality building technology ensures a high level of energy efficiency, increases comfort and contributes to reducing CO2 emissions. The house represents a forward-looking overall concept for a typology that allows for changes thanks to a resource-saving, efficient construction method and a flexible basic structure and can be easily adapted to the needs of future owners.
The Hartley, by Ridgeline Tiny Homes, is a little larger than the firm’s previous model and has a length of 8.4 m (27.6 ft). Though still quite compact, the additional room has enabled the designer to install a space-saving interior layout that can fit a family of four.
The Hartley is based on a double-axle trailer and clad in black metal, with generous glazing to help maximize daylight inside. It gets power from a standard RV-style hookup.
The home is entered through double glass doors, has a floorspace of 27 sq m (290 sq ft) and is finished in plywood. The entrance opens onto the kitchen, which is well-stocked and features an oven with a four-burner propane-powered stove, as well as a sink, a small dishwasher, a fridge/freezer, and custom cabinetry, including a pull-out pantry. There’s also a two-person breakfast bar nearby.
The kitchen connects to the Hartley’s living room, which contains a sofa, plus there’s a small desk area nearby in the storage-integrated staircase.
The Hartley’s interior is finished in plywood and has a floorspace of 27 sq m (290 sq ft)
Ridgeline Tiny Homes
Over on the opposite side of the tiny house to the living room is the bathroom. This looks relatively spacious for a home of its size and contains a shower, flushing toilet, and a vanity sink, as well as lots of custom cabinetry.
There are two bedrooms in the Hartley, both of which are typical tiny house-style loft spaces with low ceilings. The main bedroom is accessed via the storage-integrated staircase and contains a double bed. The secondary bedroom, meanwhile, is reached by a removable ladder and is on the opposite side of the home, above the bathroom. It also has a double bed in the photos but can be swapped out for two singles.
There are multiple options available for the Hartley, including its color, materials and cabinetry choices. We’ve no word on the price or availability of this one.
The family of powerhouse venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, one of the investors behind the hoped-for California Foreverutopian city in Solano County, California, is planning a substantial community development in the area, TechCrunch has learned.
Andreessen is married to Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, whose Silicon Valley real estate mogul father bought land in Solano County decades before his death in 2022, according to county records obtained by TechCrunch. An LLC operated by Arrillaga-Andreessen’s brother that’s known as A&P Children Investments, has begun the planning process for a mixed-use development with more than 1,000 homes.
This area is on the edge of the city of Vacaville, 10 miles away from the proposed California Forever development, according to property records, planning documents, and business registry information viewed by TechCrunch. A representative for A&P said at a community meeting in March that A&P plans to ultimately sell the property for the benefit of Arrillaga-Andreessen and her brother, John Arrillaga Jr.
Andreessen, Arrillaga-Andreessen and Arrillaga Jr. did not respond to requests for comment.
Two other parcels of land owned by the LLC that are not part of the proposed Vacaville development are even closer to California Forever. This land — roughly 600 acres — is across the highway and down several miles from where California Forever hopes to build its solar farm.
All told, the Arrillaga family co-owns at least these three parcels totaling around 730 acres in the area. These were originally bought by their billionaire real estate developer father, John Arrillaga Sr., and his business partner, Richard Peery, in 1985, records show. The sale of any of the properties would likely also benefit Peery’s children, as he is listed as a co-director of A&P in state paperwork. A spokesperson for Peery Arrillaga, the real estate company founded by the two men, declined to comment.
California Forever is a proposed master-planned community, to be carved from over 60,000 acres of land that several members of Silicon Valley’s elite have quietly been buying in Solano County since 2017. Investors in this land include Andreessen, as well as Mike Moritz, Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs, who have collectively sunk nearly $1 billion in pursuit of one goal: to build a new utopian city free of the ills that plague places like San Francisco, according to the New York Times.
The project leaders of California Forever didn’t know of Andreessen’s wife and brother-in-law’s connection to A&P Children Investments when they began land acquisitions in 2017 and “never made an offer” on the LLC’s land, a spokesperson says.
“We were not aware that the Arrillaga and Peery families owned any land in Solano County until about two years ago, when we were already five years into the project,” the spokesperson said, adding that there was “nothing dramatic” about how the project found out. “We were looking at who owned parcels near ours and saw A&P. We looked up A&P and saw it was owned by the Arrillaga and Peery families.”
Erin Morris, Vacaville’s community development director overseeing the East of Leisure Town Road Specific Plan, which includes the A&P Children Investments property, has never spoken to A&P’s owners. “I don’t think anyone on staff has either,” she said.
She added that the plans to develop this land had been in the works “before we ever heard about California Forever,” clarifying later that the beginnings of the A&P Children development can be traced back to 2015 — two years before California Forever’s founding.
Building a housing project is likely to be more lucrative for Arrillaga-Andreessen and her brother than selling the vacant land would have been — especially if interest in the area increases from the plans for a nearby, high-profile project like California Forever.
The A&P-owned properties are situated near the California Forever project. View larger. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch/OpenStreetMap
California Forever, located about 60 miles away from San Francisco, could be considered one type of answer to that call. But the project hit a major setback last month when it had to postpone a crucial ballot measure by two years, citing a lack of local trust and support.
Whether or not that planned community can gain the zoning and approvals it needs to proceed as envisioned, Solano County is a hotbed for lucrative development. The demand for housing has grown so high that “anything you build in Vacaville is going to be sold,” said Curtis Stocking, a Vacaville-based real estate agent who had several clients sell land to California Forever.
The A&P Children Investments LLC has certainly taken a different approach in gaining approvals for its proposed development than California Forever.
California Forever CEO Jan Sramek, tasked with buying up large swaths of the county, has reportedly faced a barrage of criticism from local politicians and residents, many of whom publicly lambasted him for dropping into the county with grand plans and few details.
Meanwhile, A&P Children’s Vacaville development is making progress. At a city council meeting in April, Greg Brun, a representative for A&P Children, called the proposed development plans “visionary.”
“What we’re looking to do here is something that’s unique to Solano County and actually to most of California,” he said. He emphasized that this was their chance to plan a large development that “doesn’t have the issues you’ve had in the past.”
The A&P Children proposal to the city of Vacaville.Image Credits: City of Vacaville
Morris, who works for Vacaville, echoed this. She explained that, normally, developers create the plan for the land and then submit it to the city for review. But A&P Children, along with the owners of adjacent parcels that are being developed, are “essentially giving the city the money” to oversee the preparation of the plan and hire its own environmental and land-planning consultants.
While it is still very early in the process, A&P has shown city officials a rough outline of a master-planned community that includes duplexes, townhomes and micro-lot single-family detached homes “along a spectrum of affordability.” These will all “fit seamlessly into existing residential neighborhoods to the north and south of the project and support walkability,” the group wrote in April. The community would potentially include a 3.9-acre commercial mixed use area, two 1.5-acre parks, and 4.9 acres of additional park and open space with trails.
Brun emphasized that the owners were not a “fly-by-night investor” but a family that has owned the land for decades, according to meeting records.
Real estate records prove those statements to be true, although Arrillaga Sr. wasn’t exactly a local who had spent years living alongside residents. Rather, he was a real estate developer who made his fortune by quietly buying up the land in the Bay Area in the years before Silicon Valley boomed and tech conglomerates built massive campuses there. He and Peery held on to the vacant Solano County parcels for their children’s inheritance.
“It was a long-term investment for their kids,” Brun said.
Lessons from a real estate tycoon father-in-law
In the 1960s, Arrillaga Sr. foresaw a Silicon Valley that didn’t yet exist. Back then, the Bay Area was mostly orchards and farmlands. But Arrillaga Sr., a Stanford University graduate, saw the burgeoning semiconductor industry and made a prescient bet: He teamed up with Peery to buy up thousands of acres of cheap land and immediately erected a series of empty concrete office buildings. Together, they built the bones of Silicon Valley and waited for the actual businesses to catch up.
By the 1980s, their wait was over. Companies like Oracle and Cisco ballooned in size and were desperate for more space, which Arrillaga Sr. and Peery were happy to supply, according to Fortune. The duo were quickly anointed real estate kingmakers, building offices for LinkedIn, Apple and Google. They became billionaires in the process.
In 1985, the pair’s focus drifted northward, according to property records obtained by TechCrunch. They scooped up the 730 acres in Solano County, split across three mostly rectangular blocks of agricultural land, and transferred the land to Arrillaga Sr.’s children in 1998. In 2006, Arrillaga Sr. and the children transferred ownership of the land a final time to A&P Children Investments, which, according to filings with the California secretary of state, is operated by Peery and Arrillaga Jr.
About a decade later, Andreessen fell into the footsteps of his father-in-law by investing in a city that didn’t yet exist — a city to be built a few miles from parcels Arrillaga Sr. bought 30 years prior. Andreessen told Fortune in 2014 that he often sought advice from Arrillaga Sr. He currently serves as the chief financial officer of Arrillaga Sr.’s Arrillaga Foundation, according to a TechCrunch review of California state records.
California Forever’s strategy mirrors Arrillaga’s: Both targeted cheap agricultural land, both operated largely in secrecy, and both set out to establish metropolises before there was any obvious demand for them.
The parcels owned by A&P Children Investments that lie across the highway from the planned California Forever are not currently zoned for urban development, meaning that, for now, they’ll lie fallow. The parcel in Vacaville, however, is further along. Morris said the city is beginning a three-year planning process, before the development’s plan is potentially approved.
Despite A&P Children taking a distinctly different approach than California Forever, the development has still faced residual anger from the controversial utopia. At the April meeting, one resident cited the ambitious project as he cautioned the town council to be careful greenlighting more development. “We don’t know how the magical city over by Rio Vista is going to turn out,” he said, referring to California Forever. “Why should we hurry?”
During that meeting, townsperson after townsperson pushed back against further development. “Ask yourself if this is the dream,” said Wendy Breckon, another Vacaville resident. “To the residents here, this is not the dream.”
But Andreessen’s family might still have an easier victory in Solano County with the A&P project. Vacaville is “such a beautiful area,” Stocking said, adding that “there’s already a big enough demand for housing.”
There are so many family board games. Here are a few more we liked.
Indiana Jones Cryptic for $40: An escape-room puzzle game with Indiana Jones styling is a licensing match made in heaven. This game is beautifully illustrated, with three cases to solve that match story beats from the original trilogy, narration from Indy’s journal, and coin rewards for success. The puzzles are a bit hit or miss (sometimes too easy, sometimes too hard), but once solved you won’t want to play again, though you can always pass the game on.
You Gotta Be Kitten Me! for $16: A simple twist on liar’s dice that focuses on bluffing and calling bluffs; I am of two minds about this game. On the one hand, the game is nothing special, but on the other, cute cats! My moggy-obsessed daughter immediately wanted to play, and we had a few laughs with outrageous bluffs on the number of glasses, hats, and bow ties on these felines.
Poetry for Neanderthals for $20: Every card has a word, and your seemingly simple task is to get your team to correctly guess it within the time limit by speaking in single syllables only. If you break the rules, the opposition can hit you with the inflatable “No” stick. Suitable for two to eight players aged 7 and up, it’s loud, silly, and usually makes everyone laugh.
Danger Danger for $15: Fast and frenetic, this simple card game for two teams is about trying to have high-scoring cards showing at the end of each round. There are no turns, you can cover the other team’s cards, and rounds are timed, but you must guess when the round will end. Super simple and very quick to play, this game can get chaotic.
That Escalated Quickly for $20: This game is quick, easy, and fun for up to eight players. Featuring scenarios such as “I have invented a new sport, what is it?” players must provide suggestions from least dangerous (1) to most dangerous (10) based on their assigned number for each round. The leader of the round has to try to get them in the correct order. It works best with witty players who know each other well.
Kitchen Rush for $46: A truly unique title that proves too many cooks can spoil the broth; this game can get chaotic fast. You work together to cook dishes for customers within a strict time limit. It’s a little too complicated for young kids. (I’d say 10 years and up is best.) If you like this, try the videogame Overcooked.
Sounds Fishy for $20: Another fun group game from Big Potato, the challenge in Sounds Fishy is to spot fake answers. Each card poses a question, but only one of the answers you get is correct. It’s for four to 10 players, and we found it more fun but tougher with more people.
Zillionaires Road Trip USA for $12: Each of the 49 squares on the game board is a quirky roadside attraction, from Bubblegum Alley to the National Mustard Museum, and players bid to buy them with the aim of securing four in a row. My kids loved this, the adults not so much.
Cards Against Humanity: Family Edition for $29: You can play this party game with up to 30 players, and it will produce a fair bit of juvenile giggling and chortling. Like the adult version, there isn’t much strategy here, but finding the perfect combination to crack everyone up is satisfying.
