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They now have livestream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service.

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- Christmas time is back at Davenport's River Center.

Festival of Trees, ready to kick off an 11 day run in the cities.

(upbeat music) Welcome to the River Center in downtown Davenport and the annual Festival of Trees.

You know, there's a certain electricity in the air right now, as the doors reopened for the first time in two years.

Something was really missing last year, as festival had to go virtual and no holiday celebration here at the River Center, but organizers are making up for the lost year.

This is the 35th year for Festival of Trees, complete with amazing tree designs, room displays and artwork from area students.

100,000 people are expected to turn out as Festival of Trees marks the start of the holiday season.

And we got a chance to talk to the administrator of Festival of Trees, Kaleigh Trammell.

Festival is back, I would say bigger and better than ever.

Is that what you were hoping for?

- Absolutely.

We wanted to be able to welcome everyone back to the River Center in a big and extravagant way after having a year where we didn't have the event live at the River Center.

And we wanted to bring it back in a way that was going to really showcase all of our designers and all of the hard work that everyone puts in to make it happen.

- I don't want to spend a lot of time on last year because everybody wants that in their rear view mirror, but I had to be tough to get through that year and still have a festival.

- Yeah, and last year was totally different.

So we had to completely reimagine what Festival meant to us.

So we did the televised special.

We did an online giving campaign and really kept Festival alive in everyone's hearts, as much as we could, because it is Quad City Arts biggest fundraiser.

And so we wanted to continue that tradition.

And then when we were able to announce that we were coming back this year, it was just an explosion of excitement.

So it couldn't have been, I couldn't have been more pleased.

- I like how you said it, "an explosion of excitement" because you're seeing that all over.

It's it's almost like a do over for Christmas last year and you can also see it cause there's been some fundraisers Student Hunger Drive, for example, where it's gone through the roof.

It's almost like people are ready and really want to enjoy this holiday.

- That's what we've seen so far and I hope that that continues.

We are ready to be able to receive people here at the River Center, have them enjoy the event, have them be able to bid on some beautiful designs.

And then at the end of the day, raise money for the arts programming at Quad City Arts.

- There are some changes.

And I think it's kind of interesting 'cause you said, I mean, everything here is for sale basically, but you have a system of online bidding that didn't exist in the past.

- That's right.

So after last year we decided to go all digital for our bidding.

So we have mobile bidding software that everyone can use to bid on the trees.

So when you come to the event, you can pick out your favorites, you can place a bid or you can place a maximum bid and the software will actually bid for you.

So you don't, you can kind of set it and forget it and let it bid.

And you can also keep track of it.

So if you come on Saturday on parade day, find some designs that you like.

You can kind of keep track of it on your phone throughout the week and keep on bidding even if you're not here at the event.

- That's a high tech way.

And hopefully, you know what, it's more convenient for people.

So hopefully it's more successful, not only for you, but of course, for Quad City Arts.

- That's what we're hoping.

So people can sit around on Thanksgiving, keep an eye on their trees and keep on bidding.

- The other thing is that you are going all cashless right now.

So I mean, when it comes to ticket sales, buy early, and if you're coming here, be ready that it's cashless.

- That's right, our admission gates are cashless.

So you can purchase your tickets in advance and online.

That's what we recommend.

You can go through a separate line, you can get your ticket scanned.

You don't even have to wait for everyone else in front of you to pay.

So that makes it super easy, really streamlined.

If you don't have access to that though, and you want to just come in and pay, make sure you bring a debit or credit card to pay at the door because admission gates are cashless.

Inside the event, you can still use cash for raffle tickets, the treat shop, the train.

But as far as our admission gates go, make sure you're ready to pay with a debit or credit card or purchase in advanced.

- Well, people are going to notice when they come into the grand hall of the River Center is it is a lot different than the festival of 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago.

The layout is very different.

What were you trying to do?

- So we wanted to completely shake it up this year since we were coming back bigger and better than ever.

So we wanted to make it like a little festival village.

So when you walk in, it will feel like you're walking down some very festive holiday streets.

You'll be able to hear the music from the stage, be able to be right near our big tree in the middle of our festival town square.

And really get to enjoy the ambience that we've created here for the event.

- I always liked also, 'cause we always talk about the Festival of Trees, the decorations that are here in the grand hall, but it is really 10 days of various events.

Some of them sell out very quickly.

And you're also trying to rethink that.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So we've got all of our special events that we've sold tickets in advance online.

We also have a special event here that we're hosting on the last Saturday of Festival of Trees.

It's called Festival After Dark.

And it is adults only silent disco right here on the floor festival.

So you can come in and get your headsets, be able to enjoy a nice evening with your friends and family after the holiday and dance the night away.

- You said it's really designed for all different levels of comfort for your visitors that are coming here to Festival.

- Absolutely.

We've kind of widened our walking pathways so that people can put a little bit more space between them.

We have hand sanitizing stations, our volunteers will be masked up so that we can make sure that we're doing our part to keep others safe and we're encouraging our visitors to do so as well.

- Kids love Santa though and Santa is going to be here.

- Santa is going to be here.

We'll have Santa's up on his throne upstairs on the second floor Concourse and he will be ready to have kids come and tell him what they want for Christmas.

- Yeah, because where else is that going to be possible?

Has to be done here.

Let's talk about the designs.

I mean, are you really impressed that you had, 150 different designs that are here from people of all different skill levels and it really does show that there's art in Christmas.

- Absolutely.

We have some incredible designers who've designed trees, they've designed door designs.

Even our gingerbread village has some incredible sugar designers who have created these beautiful, intricate pieces.

And it's really amazing to see everyone come together and donate their art, to be able to be auctioned off, to support Quad City Arts, it's really quite incredible.

- When you did open it up to designers wasn't it another like rush of excitement from people who said, "I didn't get to do this last year."

- Absolutely.

We have a ton of new designers this year, which is incredible.

So I think over the past year, everyone's probably been kind of honing their craft a little bit, collecting some items and they've really come together.

And our first time designers have some really incredible trees here.

- It's also, I mean, 'cause we always remember you got the big tree for Toys for Tots.

You have a military day, you make sure that people, men and women that are service men and women are honored.

You really do try to reach out to all different segments of the population.

- We sure do.

We want to be as inclusive as possible.

So we really try to include as many groups and as many people who want to come be part of Festival.

So we have our special stars day.

We have our silver bowl social day for our seniors.

We have our military day for military families and we even have a family day where we have discounted tickets for families to come in and enjoy the event on the last Saturday.

- You also have a thing called the Mad Hatter Brunch, is that new as well?

- It is new this year.

So we're hosting that at the Quad City Botanical Center this year and it's going to be a blast.

It's going to be a little topsy turvy, a little upside down, very fun, very different.

And of course there will be brunch and maybe even the white rabbit and the Mad Hatter himself.

- As we always point out is that this is a fundraiser for Quad City Arts, which is, you know, near and dear to your heart.

Tell me the impact of Festival.

I mean, it really is the biggest fundraiser, but that's also a big deal.

- It's a huge deal.

Festival of Trees supports the programs that Quad City Arts does throughout the year.

The visiting artists series, our Metro arts program, our public school sculpture program.

Everything that we do that supports our community and not only supports Quad City Arts, but also the economy here in downtown Davenport as well Festival brings in folks to eat at restaurants.

They bring in folks to spend their money down here.

So it also supports our community as well supporting Quad City Arts.

- The theme is, "Oh, what fun?"

You really want to emphasize that because this is the year to let loose and have a little bit of fun here.

- That's exactly right.

We're ready to have a good time.

Welcome everybody back and have a blast here at Festival of Trees.

- Our thanks to Kaleigh Trammell, who is the administrator of this year's Festival of Trees.

And let's show you around a little bit.

This is the winner of the traditional nature room.

It's called "Sleighing Christmas," complete with a sleigh of course, beautiful design by Denise Durbin, Cindy and Ray Zaraganza and Jim and Drew Durbin.

Still to come, Festival of Trees isn't the only activity that's swinging its doors open.

There's a lot more going on in downtown Davenport to talk about, we'll do that in just a moment.

But first Laura Adams wants to introduce you to some great ideas for you, your family, your friends, and everyone who wants to go out and about.

(upbeat music) - [Laura Adams] This is Out and About from November 19th through 25th.

Get ready for Festival of Trees at the River Center opening Saturday and featuring the holiday balloon parade at 10:00 AM or catch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in concert with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra the 20th at 2 and 7:30.

Plus there's the lighting on the John Deere Commons in Moline on the 20th.

Afterwards, join The Late Nite Show featuring improvisation by Bandwagon at the Black Box Theater at 7:30.

It's time to enjoy the 32nd annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Martin Luther King Center on the 19th through the 21st and to shop local at the Holiday Shopping Makers Market at Iron + Grain in East Moline throughout the month.

T&he Putnam museum present their Winter Wheels: Antique Motorcycle Exhibition, or enjoy Winter Nights Winter Lights at the Botanical Center.

Onstage, enjoy the River Choir fall concert with Hope We Shall Rise the 21st at Zion Lutheran in Clinton.

Playcrafters Barn Theater present the classic comedy, You Can't Take it With You and St. Ambrose University theater presents, She Kills Monsters the 19th and 20th at Galvin Fine Arts.

While the Augustana Chamber Orchestra and Opera X present A Midwinter Night's Dream, opera scenes from British composers, November 19th and 20th at the Burner theater.

The Bucktown Revue perform at Davenport Junior Theater, November 19th, featuring Voices of Hope gospel singers.

For more information, visit wqpt.org.

- Thank you, Laura.

Well, here's a display that caught my eye and I'm sure it's going to catch the eye of virtually every handyman out there entirely made out of yardsticks all the way to the star at the very top.

Pretty cool here.

It's called, Measure Once, Cut Once.

Yeah, always remember that, it's created by Steve Evans.

The Quad City Saxophone Christmas Group has taken stage each year at Davenport's North Park Mall.

And this year they're back, there'll be performing Saturday, December 4th at the mall.

Now two years ago, the saxophonists featured a medley that started with The Christmas Song, so here's the Quad Cities Saxophone Christmas.

(gentle music) (audience applauds) Our thanks to the Quad City Saxophone Christmas.

Once again, they will be performing at North Park Mall in Davenport on December 4th.

So you want to see some Raggedy Ann?

I got a lot of, this is incredible.

It's I Love You, Raggedy Ann, a room stuffed full of dolls from the walls to the tree.

It's everywhere!

It's sponsored by Abernathy's and it was created by Becca, Nikki and Red Perez.

Once again, I Love You, Raggedy Ann.

You know, in so many ways you could feel the pent up energy here at the River Center in downtown Davenport, as people are putting last year's COVID restrictions behind them and are really getting ready for a fresh start for this particular Christmas.

And that also goes for the merchants and businesses in the area, especially those local businesses that put their best foot forward during the holidays.

And we got a chance to talk to Alisha Espey who's with the downtown Davenport partnership.

This is such a pivotal moment for downtown Davenport.

I mean the holiday season is big and last year, and I hate to keep going back to last year, but there seems to be a lot of pent up energy for people, not only shoppers, but merchants as well downtown.

- Yeah, there's certainly last year was a strange year.

We all know that, but yeah, we saw a big comeback this summer and I think the holidays, we will see a new energy and people downtown out spending dollars.

You know, we just hope to bring them all back downtown and there's tons of activities to do that.

- Well, and let's talk about Festival of Trees because it does have a huge impact on downtown.

- Yeah, not just the numbers, you can certainly talk about the numbers of the thousands of people that come down here for this festival.

And that's a huge economic impact in itself, but also just morale.

Walking in this place, think about what that feels like or being on the streets with the parade.

So certainly we are thrilled to see Festival of Trees back up and running this year.

It's a Quad citizen favorite and a lot of visitors come in to see the displays too.

- But when you were talking about the fact that it was a better summer this summer than last summer, it's interesting because when you look at downtown Davenport right now, it's such an interesting mix of businesses and really that's exactly what you want.

- Yeah.

We have all kinds of unique experiences you can have downtown from shopping, dining, et cetera, and really in all of our downtowns, you know, the Quad Cities is lucky to have so much robust activity happening.

- So many local businesses too.

And I know the chamber is very involved in what's called, Keep it QC.

Tell me a little bit about that and how is that, 'cause that's not a new program, it's been around for a couple of months.

- Yeah.

So they Keep it QC initiative was something they started last year and that's encouraging people to spend their dollars locally, whether it's B to B or B to C, but certainly around the holidays, we're pushing consumers to spend dollars local and it's great to spend it with small businesses, but I also think it's important to mention that spending your dollars at the big box stores in town helps too 'cause they employ your neighbors and our community.

So any way that you can spend dollars regionally helps the cause.

- And I think it's interesting because so many businesses have learned something from the pandemic.

They either had to go on social media to advertise or find some ways to do a remote buying or even delivery.

And you know where I'm going because now downtown Davenport businesses are really getting involved in all those aspects.

- Yeah.

And in some ways the pandemic helped jumpstart a lot of these initiatives.

- [Jim] It did, it did.

- So people started to think more creatively and put their businesses online.

So we have a number of businesses that have online shopping attached to their stores.

So we decided to do, we did a pilot project for cyber Monday last year, this year, we're doing two rounds and extending it because it was so popular.

But essentially we have a list of participating businesses.

Consumers can go on and shop directly through them.

And then myself and my colleagues will be the Christmas elves and deliver those goods out for free within a 10 mile radius because you know, I can't go too far, but.

(both chuckle) - I know you're tied to do downtown.

So how is this going to work?

I mean, it makes shopping so easy.

- It does.

On the consumer, it's really easy.

You just go to your favorite shop that is participating.

And so Abernathy's, Alley Barber Supply are couple that have great online stores that I can mention right now.

But yeah, you can just shop directly through that.

- [Jim] There's a whole list on the website.

- Yeah.

It's behind, it's really the logistics are behind the scenes, the consumer doesn't have to worry about it.

We got it figured out in the driving routes and we'll get your goods to your door.

- The only thing is that, I mean, it is really a shared experience to be downtown.

I want to talk about Deck the Downtowns.

This is also, people can actively get involved.

- Yeah.

There's a lot of, I've always heard through my time at the downtown partnership is just a lot of nostalgia around holiday displays and people coming downtown to view the windows.

- Yeah.

When the old department stores were here, everybody loved Von Mar and Peterson.

- And you know what a lot of people don't realize is we have retailers down here that are still decorating their windows and you can come down and enjoy them.

So we decided to do a bigger campaign Deck the Downtowns that kind of highlights each of the activities in each of the chambers, the chamber hosts of downtown Bettendorf, Davenport, and Rock Island.

So yeah, Deck the Downtowns is about getting people to go out in each of those.

But we have a holiday display challenge where people can vote for their favorite window displays.

In downtown Davenport alone, we have 40 businesses participating.

So we'll give out some prizes randomly for people that put their votes in, but it's exciting in a way to just get people out and about and enjoy all the displays.

- I know the biggest thing and the only event you're thinking about right now here in downtown Davenport is the hunt for the holiday pickle.

It kicks off November 27.

It lasts until January 3rd.

What am I talking about?

- So this is a German American tradition.

So it's a pickle ornament that generally people in their homes hide in their tree.

And then the first person that finds it gets an extra gift on the holiday.

So we decided to expand on this downtown.

- [Jim] I had never heard of that.

- Yeah.

So we are partnering with the German American Heritage Center to put this on in the library.

And so we have 30 pickles hidden throughout downtown Davenport and little stamp cards that kids, once they find them, they'll get their cards stamped.

And then everybody gets a prize once they turn that completed card in.

So you only have to find 10 of the 30.

- [Jim] Wow!

- Yeah.

- [Jim] Find the pickle.

- Find the pickle.

- Yeah.

I always want to point out too, is that the other great thing is that you always think the farmer's market is just being a summertime, spring, maybe into fall, but they've got a great holiday planned as well.

- Yeah, they do.

We love all the activities that happen along the riverfront at the Freight House.

And so Chris Kendall Market is a great way to shop local and with local vendors and crafters, they also are doing a Krampus Crawl.

So they're going to get out into the core of the downtown and spend some dollars with some bars and restaurants.

And so we're always looking for ways to partner with them and activate that event even more.

- And Chris Kendall Market is coming up December 3rd through the 5th so that's really important.

I also want to talk about QC That's Where.

It is a new chamber, almost a marketing point of view to get people to talk about what's great about this area.

- Yeah.

So this is a regional brand.

It's a partnership between Visit Quad Cities the Quad Cities Chamber so we worked together to launch that, but now it's really in the hands of Quad citizens.

So it's about being able to tell your own personal story or for businesses to share, you know, Quad Cities, that's where your product is made or that's where I call home.

And so we're taking input from Quad citizens and we'll use it in talent attraction and business attraction campaigns.

And so it's just a really easy way for people to get involved and help share their story about how they are here.

- That's one of the points that the Chamber's really been active in is that people need to point out how proud they are of this area, of the changes that have occurred, and how it is more vibrant, because we've all learned that people want to live in vibrant communities.

And that includes new people and potential employees that are looking at the Quad Cities saying, "Hmm, should I live here?"

- We're very modest in the Quad Cities and so this is a way to try to get some energy behind some people like it's okay to brag about yourself sometimes, talk about what makes this place special and we'll share it with everyone else.

- One thing to brag about of course, Festival of Trees.

It is really quite a time of the year.

- Yeah, it's very cheerful and bright, vibrant in here.

So we hope everyone gets out and enjoys it.

- Our thanks to Alisha Espey with the downtown Davenport Partnership.

Once again, so important to spend those dollars locally this holiday season.

And once again, Festival of Trees runs through next Sunday.

Doors are open from nine until eight o'clock on most days, but it is closed on Thanksgiving.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, on your mobile device, and of course, streaming on your computer as well.

We want to thank you for taking some time to enjoy Festival of Trees and making the most of the holiday season in the cities.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Wheelan-Presley Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

They now have livestream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service.

- [Announcer 2] At IHMVCU, we've always been here for you.

You are, and always will be our top priority.

We care about your financial and physical health, and we are here.

IHMVCU is a proud supporter of WQPT.