This Giant, Seven-Story Picnic Basket, Once Home to an Iconic American Brand, Could Be Yours for $8.5 Million
The former Longaberger basket company headquarters in Ohio is for sale to a buyer who is willing to preserve its quirky design
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Shopping for real estate is rarely a picnic—but what if the building is a basket?
That’s the case this month in Ohio, where one of the state’s most recognizable roadside attractions, the former headquarters of the Longaberger basket company, has been listed for sale with a price tag of $8.5 million.
The unique location is a curio of surreal proportions. Standing seven stories tall, the 180,000-square-foot building sits on a 21.5-acre campus in Newark, Ohio, roughly 40 miles outside of the state's capital, Columbus. Its perch along a state highway means it has been a standout attraction for motorists since it opened in 1997.
“If I’m there, the door opens every single time with somebody saying they just had to come inside and see it,” Brandon Hess, the listing agent who’s managing the sale at Shai Hess Real Estate, tells the New York Times’ Daniela Gorny. “People love it. It’s just such a fun building; it brings a smile to everyone.”
The building’s exterior is a replica of Longaberger’s medium market basket, one of the company’s most iconic products. It’s more high-tech than meets the eye. The basket’s two massive handles are heated in the winter, to melt ice, reported Sabrina Imbler for Atlas Obscura in 2019. The exterior looks like a woven basket thanks to its construction with painted stucco molded over wire mesh.
Inside, the spacious location more closely resembles a regular corporate building. There’s an atrium with a cherry wood staircase, glass elevators, a gym and a media room. Locally sourced woodwork completes the interior design. In the company’s heyday, roughly 500 corporate employees called the basket their office.
Founded in 1973, Longaberger enjoyed decades of success selling maple baskets and basket-inspired decor and furniture. The family-owned company reached its peak around the turn of the century. In 2000, several years after its Newark headquarters was built, the company sold 11 million baskets, eclipsing $1 billion in sales, reported Amanda Boyd in a March 2001 issue of Cincinnati magazine. It employed more than 8,000 people and handed out luxury baskets to the winners at the Academy Awards.
Longaberger developed a sprawling empire across Ohio. In addition to its headquarters, the company owned a hotel, built the Longaberger Golf Club and operated large manufacturing facilities. Most famous was the Longaberger Homestead, which housed a restaurant, garden, stores and the World’s Largest Apple Basket. Tours of Longaberger’s entities were popular excursions and helped build the brand.
“That’s the magic: human hands turning bundles of sticks into baskets, which turn a family business into a major corporation, which turns its manufacturing facility into a vacation destination,” Boyd wrote in Cincinnati magazine. “Powerful magic from bundles of sticks.”
Eventually, the company’s success dwindled, and it folded in 2018. Developer and historic restoration expert Steve Coon bought the big basket building in 2017, intending to turn the unique location into a boutique hotel—plans that were stalled as a result of the pandemic.
Fun fact: Prehistoric basket
One of the oldest woven baskets ever discovered dates back 10,500 years. It was found in a cave in the Judean Desert.
Coon isn’t interested in finding just any buyer—he hopes that the building’s new owner respects its history and works to add it to the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s known everywhere as the largest basket in the world and, and I’m just glad to be a part of its story,” Coon tells the Times. “Somebody made me an offer but they wanted to take the handles off and they didn’t want it to look like a basket. It was a hard no from me. I said, ‘That’s not going to happen. It’s got to stay a basket or I won’t sell it.’”
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