GPC Christmas Tree

Each Thanksgiving as tenants are at home prepping their family dinners, GP Center gears up for our favorite time of the year - transforming the building with decorations and presenting our annual Christmas tree display. Have you ever wondered how this massive tree makes its way into our lobby? The process of selecting, shipping, and installing is quite lengthy!  Here is the full scoop on the entire process, in the words of our tree provider, Jackie Leiby with Magnum:

“I want to tell you a little bit about the Christmas tree and holiday decorations. The live tree will be coming from Michigan. The tree selected for GPC is usually about 35’ to 40’ in height to start, but sometimes it can be taller if it’s the right tree.  Several trips up north, shopping, making a selection, prepping and trucking is about a 7-day undertaking to get the tree here to Atlanta. It takes special equipment and a day to clear the land, dig and prepare the tree for cutting down which is a very careful and delicate process.. Takes a day just to tie and wrap before cutting and ready it for shipping. When cut, the tree becomes somewhat hardened and can easily acquire broken or cracked branches from the shock to the tree. This is why we very carefully hoist the tree onto a flatbed truck and it is then driven to its destination at the Georgia-Pacific building in Atlanta. This is a two day journey. 

All of the rigging equipment pulls up to the side of the Georgia-Pacific building on Thursday morning at about 9-9:30am where my team measures and discusses one more cut or how much or how little we have to trim - the tree will fit perfectly within inches from the ceiling. 

Now it will take about eight riggers to hoist it onto big dollies and guide it through the back doors of the lobby, place the trunk bottom in the custom made tree stand and get it ready to be hoisted into an upright position. Every day water should be added to the tree, it drinks a lot and gets dry very fast. Any branches trimmed off the bottom of the tree and many others are used to cover the very large tree stand which holds about 50 gallons of water. After decorating the tree, the bottom is surrounded by gift boxes. 

On Thursday, we get partial power started at the top of the big tree and let the tree relax and hang out until Friday morning when we start running power to different sections of the tree and start the lighting which takes about 6-7 hours with 5-6 people and anywhere from 13,000 to 15,000 lights depending on the actual size of the tree. A live tree is very sticky and prickly to work on. Sometimes, we have to drill holes to fill in natural open spots with tree branches or go back to our shop and pick up large items to fill natural holes in the tree.
While all this is happening, we are also attending to the 35 ’wreath to be hung on the building’s exterior. The wreath is in 4 sections and is trucked from the storage garage on a flatbed in 4 trips. Upon arrival, it is then set up on saw horses for the crew to prepare for hanging (power up, checking lights, replacing ornaments and attaching the 12’x12’ bow). Then, a slow hoist up the exterior of the second floor where the wreath will reside for 30 days. We always attract an audience who gather to watch the rising of the wreath. The decorations are trucked from storage to staging areas in the building, and we work late until all decorating is finished and beautiful. 

We are so grateful for the people and hard work involved in embellishing our lobby for the holiday season!