The Salt Lake City Downtown Alliance announced plans today for the sixth annual Eve Winter Fest to ring in the New Year.
There won’t be any fireworks this year. Instead, downtown revelers will celebrate New Year’s Eve under the
largest mirror ball in the country, designed by local artist Derek Dyer.
Made from 1,200 mirrors, the ball will have a diameter of 20 feet when it’s done. Kim Angeli-Selin is in charge of events for Downtown Alliance. She says the project was designed with the Salt Lake Valley’s inversion season in mind.
“We believe that anything that we can do to reduce the amount of smoke and particulate matter this time of year is important to our city and important to our community,” she says. “And this project allows us to—really, as a creative person, at a creative team—come up with a concept that’s new.”
Jason Mathis is executive director for Downtown Alliance. He believes the mirror ball will make an appropriate symbol of the New Year.
“A mirror is a good way to think about ourselves and about how we’re living, how we’re behaving, and what the world could be in the following year,” he remarks.
The mirror ball will be unveiled on the 29th. People will be allowed inside. And on New Year’s Eve it’ll hang from a crane over the Salt Palace.