After Madison’s Oscar Mayer plant closed in 2017, the city began imagining what the 72-acre site could become. By the summer of 2020, the plan was set: The old hot dog factory would be transformed into a high-density employment corridor interspersed with a walkable mix of housing and shops, restaurants and other businesses.
Realta Fusion plans to open a roughly $500 million research and development facility inside this space in Madison’s former Oscar Mayer plant. The plant’s owners want to bring more high-tech businesses like Realta to the vast East Side property, which has sat mostly vacant for close to a decade.
A photograph of an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile hangs in a renovated office building previously used by the meatpacking company. Realta Fusion will move into part of the office building along with the adjacent buildings on the northern side of the property.
Representatives from SJL Government Affairs & Communications, left, and Dan Seibel and Randy Goll, owners of the former Oscar Mayer property, at right, discuss possible ways to repurpose the many interconnected buildings that make up the century-old meatpacking plant. Seibel and Goll bought the plant last year after earlier revitalization efforts fell apart during the pandemic.
Dan Seibel, above, and Randy Goll anticipate that the low-ceilinged, multi-story manufacturing spaces built many years ago for Oscar Mayer production equipment will be the hardest part of the plant to fill with new tenants. They thought finding users for the offices would be even more of a challenge, but much of the space has already been spoken for.
The former Oscar Mayer property, rear, overlooks the East Madison Little League fields from across Packers Avenue. The city now owns the site, which the Little League began leasing from Oscar Mayer in 1994.
Realta Fusion plans to open a roughly $500 million research and development facility inside this space in Madison’s former Oscar Mayer plant. The plant’s owners want to bring more high-tech businesses like Realta to the vast East Side property, which has sat mostly vacant for close to a decade.
Representatives from SJL Government Affairs & Communications, left, and Dan Seibel and Randy Goll, owners of the former Oscar Mayer property, at right, discuss possible ways to repurpose the many interconnected buildings that make up the century-old meatpacking plant. Seibel and Goll bought the plant last year after earlier revitalization efforts fell apart during the pandemic.
Dan Seibel, above, and Randy Goll anticipate that the low-ceilinged, multi-story manufacturing spaces built many years ago for Oscar Mayer production equipment will be the hardest part of the plant to fill with new tenants. They thought finding users for the offices would be even more of a challenge, but much of the space has already been spoken for.
A photograph of an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile hangs in a renovated office building previously used by the meatpacking company. Realta Fusion will move into part of the office building along with the adjacent buildings on the northern side of the property.
The former Oscar Mayer property, rear, overlooks the East Madison Little League fields from across Packers Avenue. The city now owns the site, which the Little League began leasing from Oscar Mayer in 1994.
