GREEN GIANT
Ho, ho, ho! Rock Center gets its star
IT’S BEGINNING to look a lot like. . . stop it.
A 75-foot-tall Norway spruce from State College, Pa., arrived in Midtown on Saturday and was hoisted above the ice rink at Rockefeller Plaza.
The stately spruce’s 243-mile journey to Rockefeller Center stardom began seven years ago when Erik Pauze, the famed building’s head gardener, spotted the tree.
The 80-year-old softwood towered over school superintendent Jason Perrin’s backyard until it was cut down on Thursday.
“I have to be honest, when Eric first knocked on my door, I didn’t believe him,” Perrin said of the moment he met Pauze in 2010. “After I figured out it wasn’t a prank, Erik told me my tree looked like it was tall and wide enough, and full enough, and he thought that in a few years it might be ready to be the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.”
The 12.5-ton tree, which grew 10 feet since Pauze first saw it, is nearly 50 feet wide.
Once the spruce stands upright, it will be wrapped in more than 50,000 LED lights on around 5 miles of wire and topped with a 25,000-crystal Swarovski star.
“Close to a million people are going to see it on a daily basis,” Perrin said. “It kind of blows my mind in a way.”
The 85th Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony will take place on Nov. 29, and the tree will light up the plaza until Jan. 7, 2018.
At the end of the season, the spruce will serve another important purpose.
NBC will donate the tree to Habitat for Humanity so its lumber can be used to build homes.