Company proposes AI-powered emergency shelters at Solano County fairgrounds

VALLEJO – A California company is proposing building “blackout proof,” AI-powered emergency shelters at fairgrounds across California, including at the Solano County Fairgrounds. 

The company, Global Stack LLC, is based out of Santa Ana and has already pitched several fairgrounds through introductions made by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. 

Solano County Fair Association CEO Tom Keaney said that they heard a pitch from the company in April, but said that the project is “basically tabled” in Solano County until they learn more information about Global Stack and its proposed plan.

At the core of the company’s pitch is the idea of disaster preparedness, said Daniel Kang, the owner and co-founder of Global Stack. The pitch deck shown to fairgrounds leaders featured futuristic AI illustrations of helipads and bustling fairgrounds with hot air balloons. The company’s proposal had three major components: a multi-level parking garage, a helicopter landing pad for emergencies, and a small data center meant to provide “world-class AI capabilities and blackout-proof operations” should the power grid fail during a disaster. 

Kang pushed back on concerns that they’re a data center company, stating that their aim is to build an “emergency resilience system” for California.

The company’s vision is to have 70 fairgrounds all across California connected using the same system by 2030. Other proposed Bay Area sites include the Contra Costa County Fairgrounds, the Cow Palace Arena & Event Center, the San Mateo Event Center, the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, and the Napa County Fairgrounds. 

The company estimated in its presentation that its project could bring in annual revenue of $2 million to each city and add around 7,000 jobs. 

“Global Stack was built to bring the public and private sectors together to strengthen the resilience of a disaster-prone state,” Kang said.

He added that participating fairgrounds would have uninterrupted connectivity to each other in the case of an emergency through the data centers. “If one location goes down, the others keep first responders communicating and critical information available on a private network,” Kang said. “During a disaster, it's the layer that stays up when everything else fails.” 

He said that the systems would be a closed loop, and would not use water or draw from local water supplies. Each facility would also use no more than 10 megawatts, Kang added, which he said was “roughly the footprint of a mid-sized shopping center.”

Though the project is on hold in Solano County, Keaney said that they were initially interested in the pitch because the fairgrounds is supposed to be like the “Swiss Army knife of facilities for the county.” Not only does it host the annual summer fair and various trade shows, but it also served as a testing site during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s meant to be an evacuation and shelter location for residents in the case of an emergency.

The Solano County Fairgrounds is a member of the California Emergency Response and Resiliency Venues and Fairgrounds, a coalition of fairgrounds advocating for better disaster preparedness. That’s why the idea of a standalone energy grid sounded like something worth looking into, according to Keaney. In the case of  “earthquakes to fires and tsunamis … we have to be able to keep ourselves in a status where we can take people in during bad times,” Keaney said. 

Keaney added that they weren’t interested in building a new parking structure, but that they were intrigued by the helicopter landing pad proposal. 

“If you look at our proximity to Kaiser hospital, that could be life-changing and life-saving in the event of an emergency,” Keaney said. 

If the project were to ever move forward, it would be decided at the county level. City spokesperson Robert Briseño said that Vallejo hasn’t had any inquiries or conversations with the company.

The Solano County Fair Association, an independent nonprofit that manages the fairgrounds, signed a five-year agreement with the county in 2024 to manage the full 153 acres of fairgrounds land. Before that, it only managed around 69 acres, which included the expo hall, offices, and the closest parking lots. 

Still, Keaney said ultimately it would be up to the Solano County Board of Supervisors to decide whether to greenlight the Global Stack project because it's still “the county that owns the property, and they have the long-term interest” in the land. 

County spokesperson Matthew Davis noted that Global Stack’s proposal was not in alignment with the association’s operating contract with the county. 

Executives at other Bay Area sites, like Cow Palace and the San Mateo Event Center, have been more receptive to Global Stack’s proposal, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The idea faced immense public criticism in Calistoga, meanwhile, as residents called the prospect of a data center “monsterous” and questioned the company’s water use claims during public comment at the Fairgrounds Advisory Committee’s June meeting, per Bay City News.

Keaney said he can understand the appeal of the project, as fairgrounds are perpetually underfunded. According to the Solano County Fair Association’s tax filings, the nonprofit’s expenses often outpace its revenues. In 2024, the county approved a $1 million grant to repair the roof of McCormack Hall and upgrade its ventilation systems to make it more emergency-ready. But those types of grants are rare, and a vast majority of the association’s money comes from revenue generated from the events it holds on the grounds.

The Global Stack proposal then is “looking at a way of being able to stabilize the income flow for different fairgrounds … and plug some of these holes that some of the fairgrounds in the system suffer from,” Kearney said.