Joliet Christmas tree is a 5,300-pound blue spruce

The city Christmas tree is a 5,300-pound blue spruce that was overwhelming Diane Neumann’s small backyard until Friday.

The tree, estimated to be 50 feet tall, was cut, loaded and moved to Van Buren Plaza downtown, where it will be decorated for the annual tree lighting that will precede the Light Up the Holidays Parade on Nov. 26.

Neumann, who lives on Roosevelt Avenue just around a corner from Taft School, described her tree as “gorgeous” and “beautiful” with one drawback.

“It’s big,” she said. “It’s outgrown its area.”

Donating a tree to the city for Christmas turned out to be sort of a family tradition that Neumann learned about last week when her uncle related that her grandfather, Victor Chuporak, donated a tree for the same cause in 1969.

City Arborist Jim Teiber said Neumann’s tree was the first he looked at from the 10 trees offered, and he took it.

“It’s a beautiful tree,” Teiber said. “But it’s not so much the tree. It’s the route.”

Getting the tree downtown is one of the toughest parts of the job.

Cutting it down was actually the simplest part, although it actually was cut upward.

The tree as it was cut was hoisted from the ground by Chellino Crane, which has donated its services to the annual Christmas tree project for 20 years. The tree appeared to float like a hot-air balloon as the crane carried the tree from Neumann’s yard to a trailer on Roosevelt Avenue.

The plan was to place the tree on the trailer in such a way that it could descend onto two wooden horses where it would be balanced so as not to harm branches as it was strapped onto the trailer for the ride downtown. It was a painstaking process taking a couple of hours in the attempt to lay down the huge tree lightly. But the tree proved too large and bulky for the plan, crushing one horse and eventually laying flat on the trailer.

“Just the girth of it,” Darren Bredesen, who would drive the truck hauling the tree, said of the challenge to get the truck on the trailer. “I knew it would be difficult.”

Bredesen, with DeBold Top Soil and Trucking in Shorewood, on Thursday drove the Shorewood Christmas tree to village hall. That tree was comparatively small at 4,000 pounds and easier to handle, he said.

The drive downtown was a parade in itself with a police escort and several trucks that included crews from Arbor Tek Services in Joliet, the third company involved in the project, driving down Black Road and Ruby Street before crossing the bridge into downtown.

The tree arrived safe and sound and is standing in Van Buren Plaza.

“It’s going to be beautiful when it’s all lit up,” Neumann said. “I can’t wait to see it.”