A warehouse built for furniture giant MillerKnoll in Williamsburg Township just changed hands for $65 million, landing among the Cincinnati region's largest commercial real estate sales of 2026. The buyer, a Manhattan-based investment firm operating as New Haven REIT, closed the deal in July after acquiring the fully occupied, recently expanded 730,080-square-foot facility from Prologis, the world's largest industrial real estate company.
The sale was first detailed by WKRC Local 12, which reported that New Haven REIT, a real estate investment trust subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, picked up the 47-acre property at 3001 Afton Drive, just east of Batavia. According to the Cincinnati Business Courier, New Haven REIT disclosed the Williamsburg Township purchase in its second-quarter 2026 SEC filing alongside 17 other U.S. industrial acquisitions totaling $271 million and three retail buys worth $86 million — making the Clermont County warehouse its only purchase anywhere in Ohio, Kentucky, or Indiana during that period.
Design Within Reach, MillerKnoll's high-end residential furnishings division, is the warehouse's tenant.
From $1.4 Million in Raw Land to a $65 Million Sale
The property's backstory shows just how much value the site has gained. Duke Realty South Afton LLC originally bought the land in 2018 for $1.4 million and built a 617,760-square-foot facility for MillerKnoll, the Business Courier reports.
Prologis added further value last year. In August 2025, Prologis and MillerKnoll broke ground on a 112,320-square-foot expansion — built by Fort Mitchell-based general contractor Paul Hemmer Co. — that grew the warehouse footprint by nearly 20% to support North American fulfillment for Design Within Reach, according to REJournals. The expansion also lifted site staffing from 120 to 150 employees. Representatives from Prologis, MillerKnoll, Paul Hemmer Co., Williamsburg Township and Clermont County all attended the groundbreaking, per Local 12's reporting.
That same event included a community-relations gesture: MillerKnoll presented a $5,800 corporate gift to the Williamsburg Township Emergency Services Department, with local township trustees on hand, REJournals reports. The expansion and the newly extended master lease appear to have set the stage for the stabilized asset's resale to Morgan Stanley's REIT less than a year later.
Part of a Booming State Route 32 Corridor
The MillerKnoll hub is in the same South Afton Industrial Park as a nearby Nestlé Purina plant. A possible project on about 160 acres near State Route 32 has been estimated at $1 billion, though construction is not settled. Hoodline previously reported on Purina's nearby plant in the same South Afton Industrial Park.
That 242-acre industrial park was established in 2016 by the Clermont County Community Improvement Corporation under a tax-increment financing district designed to direct growth in property tax revenues toward regional infrastructure and local school capital projects, according to the Ohio Auditor of State. The framework helped transform what had been a rural bedroom community into a hub for large-scale industrial development.
The pace of that transformation shows up in the numbers. Clermont County signed off on a record 6,156 building permits in 2025 — the third consecutive annual high and the first time the county topped 6,000 permits in a single year, as Hoodline reported in its March building permit report.
A Tenant With Deep Pockets
The master lease's long-term guarantee carries weight because of MillerKnoll's financial position. The company, formed through the merger of Herman Miller and Knoll, reported net sales of $3.84 billion for its 2026 fiscal year, a 4.7% increase year-over-year, along with a net profit recovery to $95.7 million, according to MarketScreener. That financial strength, paired with a lease running through 2036 and built-in annual rent escalations, is the kind of income stability that institutional investors like Morgan Stanley's New Haven REIT are willing to pay a premium for in today's commercial real estate market.
