Early last year, Fortune Brands Innovations announced plans to close the Master Lock corporate headquarters in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, ending a more than 100-year legacy in the state.
Fortune Brands, which also owns security brands SentrySafe, American Lock, August and Yale, wanted to consolidate operations in Illinois—the company's corporate headquarters is based in Deerfield.
The decision to move the brand's corporate headquarters came about a year after Master Lock shuttered manufacturing operations in Milwaukee in March 2024. Some 330 employees lost their jobs when production left the state, and another 120 had their positions relocated to the Chicago suburb when the headquarters closed.
As of late 2023, the Milwaukee facility had more than 1,300 people on the payroll, but now the site is on the auction block.
The 780,000-square-foot manufacturing campus that spans some 26 acres in Milwaukee is set to be sold at auction beginning Friday, July 31, 2026.
The auction will be administered by FRE Auctions. The auction house asks potential buyers to submit offers with contingencies in lieu of an entirely unconditional auction bid.
The campus is divided into four primary buildings that offer a combination of single- and multi-story industrial functions, with clear heights ranging from about 12 feet to 23 feet and a multi-loading capacity, including 10 docks and 10 drive-in doors. The property listing notes seven acres of paved parking and a four-megawatt electrical supply.
The property has a total assessed value of about $3 million ($2,965,800), according to LoopNet.
A report from Urban Milwaukee states that Commercial Development Company (CDC), based in St. Louis, acquired the property from Fortune Brands in May 2025 for $2.6 million. At the time, the idea was to reboot the site for manufacturing, warehouse or industrial storage operations. The auction suggests that those plans have been pulled off the table.
In 2012, President Barack Obama traveled to Master Lock's site in Milwaukee to discuss "insourcing," his plan to boost American manufacturing and retain manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
