Luck Comes In Trees

Kelly steered us into another local activity/event she'd read about in the paper. The Springfield Boys & Girls Club were having an ongoing Christmas tree raffle, called the Festival of Trees. I'd been promising we'd go, and today was the last day they were running it, so off we went...

We parked in the lot under the highway, which gave us an excuse to use the cool covered walkway that goes over East Columbus Ave. into the Sheraton/Monarch Place building.

It was pretty neat, though the glass was marred in a couple places with these interesting little 'bullet' sized cracks. Aaah, those incorrigible little scamps, with their gats...

We got across the first one and into the building, but the doors were locked to the second walkway that goes into Tower Square where the tree event was happening.

So we continued on, through the nice main lobby of the Monarch Building. I was surprised they let people just walk around in there on a Sunday when no one was around.

We exited out the front doors and crossed the street to Tower Square. I always wonder what that huge blue logo on the side of the building was supposed to be. I always thought it had something to do with the intersection right there. Kind of an overhead view. Kelly said it was the bottom half of a 'Q', for what reason she couldn't guess, maybe the Q in SQUARE?

Like a lot of people, I hadn't been in there in years. It was still Baystate West the last time I was there. Local bloggers have done some good posting about the Tower Square and it's ongoing ailments recently, here are a few:

http://tommydevine.blogspot.com/2007/09/tower-square.html

& http://urbancompass.net/?p=600

& http://deadmalls.com/malls/baystate_west_tower_square.html

The place has nice colored lighting and a clean modern look. There was a noticeable lack of businesses in there though, and I'd read that a couple long time shops and restaurants had just recently closed up. It's really too bad, and Springfield continues to look for a magic bullet to bring it back to life. Location, Location, Lo-freakin-cation.

Up on the second floor, we found the Tree Festival. It cost 5 bucks each to get in, and raffle tickets were 25 for $10. Inside there were literally about 100 trees, each with it's own sponsor and theme. All were decorated not just with the usual ornaments, but with all kinds of gift certificates and valuable items. On one tree I saw a certificate for $1500 worth of dental work, to give you an idea...

This one was covered with player cards, pictures and other sports-associated memorabilia. I'm not a sports fanatic, but it looked like some pretty valuable collector-quality stuff.

The idea is to take your raffle tickets and deposit them in a bucket, beneath a tree or trees of your choice. At the end of the two week event, the tickets are drawn for each tree, and someone wins that tree along with all its gifts and decorations.

My kid rushed immediately to the I-Pod themed tree, and deposited most of his tickets.

Santa was of course on hand, supervising the event and giving out candy canes...

These kids and piano player regaled a crowd with some nice holiday harmonies.

We had to leave shortly before the drawing, much to my kid's chagrin, as he was positive he would win the I-Pod tree. We walked out debating the odds of winning one of the 100 trees x 100's of visitors x 25 raffle tickets each...He still thought the odds were in his favor. Reason number twelve I hope they don't bring a casino here...

We did have time for a quick look across the street, where there were some Christmas light displays in a little park nearby, and Monarch Place had some nice Christmas-ey adornments.

We got back to the car, just as another 'Wintry-Mix' began to fall about us...