Thousands of people are expected to be in downtown Detroit to watch the "D" drop on New Year's Eve this Saturday.
Jerrid Mooney co-founded The Drop: the Meridian Motor City NYE celebration seven years ago.
He said if the weather forecast holds, this year's event will be one of the warmest since the "D" drop began.
“We've had negative temperatures, snow storms, and it didn't affect the crowd then, it's certainly not going to affect it this weekend,” Mooney said.
The event is free to the public and will have activities for children and adults from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., including live music, kid’s karaoke, face painting and more.
Mooney said the event has grown in attendance each year since it was founded and he credits that to its sponsors.
“This event has continued to grow as word has gotten out and it's really exploded with the help of Meridian's sponsorship and Quicken Loans presenting sponsorship as well,” Mooney said.
Matthew Flynn, the event's executive producer, said last year's crowd was over 25,000 people.
While there are other New Year's Eve celebrations throughout the state, Detroit's is the biggest by far now that the New Year's Eve ball drop in Grand Rapids has been canceled.
According to Mlive, the Grand Rapids New Year’s ball-drop was canceled due to dropping attendance in the past few years.
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The event is well over a six-figure cost to put together, from equipment rental to heat for the stage to insurance to police force costs, Bradman said. "It really became an expensive endeavor with minimal return," Bradman said, noting it was challenging to find advertisers as well.
For people on the west side of the state who don’t want to make the long commute to Detroit for New Year’s, there will be ball-drop events in Ludington and Grand Haven.
