Magic Tree coming to Optimist Christmas tree lot

<p>Liv Paggiarino/News Tribune (File)</p><p>People wander through the brightly-lit corridors of trees Nov. 27, 2020, looking for their perfect Christmas tree at the JC Optimist Club’s annual sale. The Optimist Club would like to start the tradition of a magic tree in Jefferson City, where a tree would contain about 24,000 lights.</p>

Liv Paggiarino/News Tribune (File)

People wander through the brightly-lit corridors of trees Nov. 27, 2020, looking for their perfect Christmas tree at the JC Optimist Club’s annual sale. The Optimist Club would like to start the tradition of a magic tree in Jefferson City, where a tree would contain about 24,000 lights.

Columbia, Boonville and other communities have one. Now Jefferson City will, too.

Next month, the annual Christmas tree lot for the Jefferson City Optimist Club will be open on the lot at Hawthorn Bank on West Dunklin Street. This year, the group also plans to have a Magic Tree on the lot.

"Many of our members didn't know about the Magic Tree that's in Columbia, but I and others told them about the large number of teens who go there every year to get their pictures taken by it," Optimist member Don Lewis said. "We talked with Hawthorn, and they said they'd provide the electricity so we made the commitment to do the tree."

Lewis said they should start getting in some of the 24,000 lights that will be on the tree sometime this week.

"We want it set up for people to get the picture by it, just like in Columbia," Lewis said. "Hopefully people from across the area can come by and enjoy it."

Lewis said they had a "phenomenal year" as far as tree sales go. It was the first time in what some members believed was 70 years for the tree sale to not be held on the property across the street. Known as the Carpenter's Building, the structure was sold and turned into condominiums.

The Optimists sell Balsam firs from Michigan and Scotch pines from Nova Scotia, Canada, along with Fraser firs, grown in North Carolina and Michigan. Last year, the Optimists only had a little more than 500 trees that sold out faster than expected - just two weeks after they opened for business.

"About six or seven years ago, the tree industry decided maybe the live tree business was going down, so they didn't plant as many as they normally would," Lewis said. "We're paying for that now."

Unlike most sales, extra inventory can't be ordered quickly when things start to sell out. So the lot closes when the trees are gone.

Tree prices vary by height and type. Smaller trees are available for $30, with prices increasing from there.

All money raised by the sale of the trees goes back to children of the community. The Optimist Club's motto is "Friend of the Youth."

Each year, the club, founded in 1946, gives money and time to a variety of youth projects across the city, including Special Olympics Missouri, Boys and Girls State, the Boys & Girls Club of Jefferson City and the Jefferson City High School Baseball Booster Club.

The goal is to turn on the lights on the Magic Tree when the tree sales start Saturday, Nov. 27.

Lewis said having the Magic Tree is not so much about money making as it is a community service project.

"We just hope people will come out, drive by and enjoy it," Lewis said.