Hotel’s Sweet Charity

Imagine this: a lobby the size of two football fields. An atrium capped by a sky-lit ceiling suspended 90 feet above a one-acre lake.

Now imagine this in gingerbread and shrunk to munchkin dimensions, and you have a good picture of the incredible, edible centerpiece in the Westin Bonaventure’s latest venture--its miniature holiday village.

Sharing the high-glucose atmosphere with the cookie and candy skyscraper is an architecturally correct pagoda, a gumdrop-roofed log cabin, and a frosted structure that might have been the White House in sweeter days. The creations are the product of 600 hours of work by hotel volunteers.

Along with a mobile menagerie of baby bears, tiny trains, and pine-cone-toting elves, it’s on display in the hotel’s lobby at 404 S. Figueroa St. through the New Year.

Bon appetit.