How long does it take to decorate the largest mall in the nation? Seventeen years ago it took more than five weeks to decorate Mall of America. The team has gotten so good at their job that, even with much more décor today, the holiday decorating crew finished the task in a record five days! Clayton Omberg and Chris Grap share the story of decorating for the holidays. To hear the entire conversation check out So Much More Ep. 75: Deck the Mall.
Presented by Bloomington Minnesota Travel and Tourism the official destination marketing organization for the city of Bloomington, Minn.
[00:00:00] How long, 17 years ago, how long did it take to get the mall fully decorated?
[00:00:04] When I first started, it took about five weeks.
[00:00:08] Wow.
[00:00:09] And we had less ornaments and lights than we do now.
[00:00:12] Okay. That's amazing.
[00:00:14] It is.
[00:00:14] It has transformed over the years. I'm going to have Chris talk about what some of our decor
[00:00:19] looks like in just a minute, but I mean, it's amazing looking right now. I love the direction
[00:00:24] that you guys have taken this. But this year, how long did it take you and your team to completely
[00:00:29] decorate this enormous 5.6 million square foot building?
[00:00:32] We did it in five nights.
[00:00:34] Five nights. Is that a record?
[00:00:36] It is.
[00:00:37] Awesome!
[00:00:38] That's the quickest time ever.
[00:00:40] I actually don't know what's more impressive when you hear it took five weeks to do it and
[00:00:45] you think, wow, that takes a long time to get it ready or five nights. Like you got it
[00:00:49] all done in five nights.
[00:00:50] And it looks awesome.
[00:00:52] I mean, it absolutely looks amazing.
[00:00:54] Is it just because every year you learn new tricks and you know how to do it and you just
[00:00:57] have it down?
[00:00:58] Yeah, we have it down. A lot of it is preparation when we put it away. You know, how we put things
[00:01:03] in the room, what we learned putting up, what took time and how can we mitigate that the
[00:01:07] following year? How can we make that process quicker? We build a lot of our own jigs or
[00:01:11] stuff that we lift the products with or the ornaments and trees and whatnot. We build extra
[00:01:17] carts so we can have more people doing the process, learning from what you did the year before.
[00:01:22] And I see you have a manual with you. What is what is what's in there?
[00:01:26] The binder.
[00:01:26] Yeah. For those at home, there's a big binder here with a lot of stuff in it.
[00:01:30] There is. This has all the layouts of where we put the trees, where the lights go, where
[00:01:35] the ornaments go. Bolt patterns in there for the ornaments. And if we ever were to break
[00:01:40] one or something, we know exactly how to rebuild one.
[00:01:42] And you actually have a map that shows you every level of the mall and every exact location
[00:01:48] of how high of a tree to put there, correct?
[00:01:50] Yeah, we do.
[00:01:50] Yeah.
[00:01:50] Wow. And you follow that closely.
[00:01:52] We follow that to a T.
[00:01:54] To a T. You don't get it? I love that.
[00:01:56] And what are the different heights of some of those trees? Do you know?
[00:01:58] We have six foot, eight foot, and 10 foot trees.
[00:02:01] That is so much fun that you have a map all mapped out.