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| This single tree from Palos Heights (left) will join the Picasso sculpture (right) in Daley Plaza. (CBS/AP photos) |
Posted: Saturday, 07 November 2009 8:19AM
Official Christmas tree lifted into place
Bob Roberts Reporting
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CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Chicago's official Christmas tree has been lifted into place.
The 55-foot-long spruce tree had to be slim enough to pass under the Loop 'L' on a flatbed truck. Workers took hours to assemble a giant base for the tree. Once that was complete, actually lifting the tree into place took a giant crane about five minutes.
Mayor's Office of Special Events Executive Director Megan McDonald said that for the next couple of days, crews will make sure that the tree is firmly anchored in place -- a process different from what's been done in recent decades, because this is the first time since 1955 that the official city Christmas tree was actually one tree.
In recent years, 113 smaller trees had been placed in a giant framework to fashion an outsized, 88-foot-tall "tree" with an enormous base.
McDonald said the switch to a single tree, donated by the Harlan Weivoda family of Palos Heights, allows the city to cut its tree-related costs by more than half from last year's $300,000.
The 60-year-old tree stood in the Weivodas' front yard until Thursday. McDonald said it was chosen because it was "the perfect size" to be hauled in by truck.
"That's really the only way we could get it downtown, short of flying it in on helicopter," which would have proven far more expensive, McDonald said.
Another money-saving change will be in the decoration. This year's spruce will use the same blanket of 7,000 bright but low-power LED lights donated by Underwriters' Laboratories. But McDonald said the ornaments are staying in storage.
"They're simply too heavy," she said.
Nonetheless, assembling the Christkindelmarket and other displays around the tree will take more than two weeks. The tree-lighting ceremony, hosted by Mayor Daley, is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 25.
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