Massive Basket Building Is Up for Sale

Newark, Ohio —(Map)

An office building that looks just like a giant picnic basket? That was the dream of Dave Longaberger, who ran a very successful basket-making company. But now his company is no longer in business, and the building is for sale – for $8.5 million.

Both of Dave Longaberger’s parents made baskets by hand. In 1973, Mr. Longaberger decided to open his own company, selling baskets made by hand from the wood of maple trees.

Over the years, the Longaberger Company became very successful. By 2000, the company had over 8,000 people working for it. That year, it sold 11 million baskets and made over $1 billion.

In the 1990s, Mr. Longaberger hired a company to build an office building for him in Newmark, Ohio. He said he wanted the building to look just like the company’s most popular basket, called a “medium market basket”.

That turned out to be a challenge. For one thing, the basket was wider at the top, which meant that the upper floors had to extend beyond the lower floors. It was also hard to imitate the shape of the wood weaving in and out of the basket.

But Mr. Longaberger got what he wanted: a large, seven-story office building that looked just like a basket. The architects used steel and concrete and normal building methods to create most of the building. But they used specially designed curved pieces to decorate the building so that it looked like a basket.

The finished building has long attracted attention from people driving past on a nearby highway. But it is also beautiful inside, with glass elevators, lots of offices, and a huge open area with natural light coming in through the building’s glass roof. In its earlier years, close to 500 people worked in the basket building.

The handles of the “basket” weigh close to 150 tons (136 tonnes). These handles have to be specially heated in the winter to keep icicles from forming on them and then falling through the glass roof.

The basket building is highly unusual. It became a famous landmark in Ohio, and is often called the “largest basket in the world”.

But over time, the Longaberger Company began to struggle. The basket building was sold to a man called Steve Coon. Mr. Coon wanted to turn the building into a hotel. But the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 put an end to those plans.

Now Mr. Coon is selling the basket building for $8.5 million. He thinks it’s a good deal. “It would probably cost about $80 million to build something like this today,” he told the New York Times, “Especially with that much property.”

Mr. Coon appreciates the history of the building and the efforts that Mr. Longaberger took to build it. He wants to make sure that the basket building is saved for the future.

So he has made a rule: He will only sell the building to someone who is willing to keep it looking like a basket. “It’s got to stay a basket,” he says, “Or I won’t sell it.”