NEW YORK - WORKERS put the finishing touches on Saturday on a dazzling new Waterford Crystal ball that will drop in Times Square to signal the start of the new year and then remain on display as a tourist attraction.

The new ball - 12 feet (3.66 metres) in diameter, weighing nearly 12,000 pounds (5443 kilogrammes), and covered with 2,668 Waterford Crystal triangles - has a new, permanent home on the roof of One Times Square.

'Now it is going to be up there shining throughout the year,' said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance. 'I really believe it's going to be the next Empire State Building.'

The project of creating a permanent perch for the ball took a year to complete and cost about $5 million (S$7.24 million), said Jeffrey Straus, president of Countdown Entertainment, which is co-producing the event.

Because of the massive sphere's weight and size, engineers had to build an entire new roof structure and reinforce the steel columns going down to the 16th floor, Straus said.

The ball will drop from a 141-foot (43-metre) mast that was also specially made and taller than the mast used previously.

Organisers said they will test the ball on Dec 30 and light it the following day. The ball will be raised midway up the mast on Jan 6, where it will stay until the next new year's celebration.

Straus said the bigger, brighter ball will remain in place all year atop the building to celebrate other holidays including Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July and Halloween.

For its New Year's Eve debut, workers used special tools to install the new crystal triangles on the ball and spent four weeks getting the structure ready.

The crystal triangles, with cuts on both sides to maximize light refraction, feature a new 'Let There Be Joy' design, depicting an angel with uplifted arms. The triangles were fabricated in Ireland.

More than 32,000 LEDs will be used to illuminate the ball.

'God knows we need some joy coming into this new year,' Waterford spokesman Peter R. Cheyney said. 'That's the truth.' -- AP