PENSACOLA, FL - Plans are in the works to make downtown Pensacola the hot spot for New Year's Eve.

Here's a look at how city and community leaders want to ring in the New Year.

Gallery Night draws thousands to downtown Pensacola.

Merchants stay open after hours and people flood the streets.

City leaders want to take the same concept and build on it for New Year's Eve.

They announced their plans this morning at Plaza Ferdinand.

Mike Wiggins/Pensacola City Council: "This is going to be quite frankly, a combination Gallery Night, 4th of July fireworks, an Evening in Old Seville, all stirred together to have one big party for all the citizens of Pensacola on New Year's."

Downtown Countdown is the brainchild of Pensacola's Community Redevelopment Agency.

Terri Kuvach/CRA Special Events Coord.: "One of our ways to reinvent downtown is to come up with ideas and events that will bring people downtown."

Part of Palafox and Government Streets will be closed to traffic so people can shop and walk freely through downtown.

Early in the evening, there will be a kid's area for the family friendly countdown, plus live music and later a ten-foot illuminated pelican will drop from a crane in the street.

The owners of Seville Quarter are helping to plan the celebration.

Buck Mitchell/Seville Quarter: "Seville has always been at the heart of New Year's Eve in Pensacola and when the city came to us and said look we have an idea, we want to bring that celebration out into the streets and incorporate all the downtown merchants into New Year Eve's, I was like, I love it. We're all on board."

Community leaders hope downtown countdown will attract people from across the gulf coast and become a New Year's Eve tradition.

Kuvach: "It will be fun. It will be free. You can bring your kids, fireworks, confetti, bands, it will be great."

If you'd like more information, you can call the Special Events Coordinator For The Community Redevelopment Agency at 435-1695. New Years Celebration Downtown Countdown