By Macy Hurwitz | 16 February 2010 | Cedar Park Citizen

Cedar Park Mayor Bob Lemon had an idea.

Noticing that Central Texas does not host a planetarium—and brainstorming on what the city should take on as its next project—Lemon floated the idea to a couple of people, including the 4B Economic Development Corporation. Once the 4B Board and members of a couple of other committee members got a hold of the idea, they embraced it.

4B Board President Brian Rice said the board has set aside money in its budget to do some assessments toward building a city science center. However, the two people who took the idea the farthest were newly appointed tourism board member Alain O’Toole and 4A Board member and City Council Place 6 candidate Don Tracy.

“Several weeks ago, right before Christmas, this idea of the planetarium was thrown out there and Alain and I started thinking through the possibility of building upon that planetarium idea and creating something that could serve as a destination, community development engine and an economic development engine,” Tracy said.

O’Toole and Tracy gave a presentation outlining their vision for a Cedar Park Science Education Center. The CPSEC would have a community center, a planetarium, a history museum, a veterans museum and an art gallery. They see it both as a place where local residents can take their families to learn and play, but also as a place that would attract visitors from all over Central Texas.

O’Toole stressed the opportunities for collaboration between all of the boards, committees and other groups in the community on the project. She gave several examples of ways to bring the boards together as well, such as having the newly formed public arts board spearhead the art gallery, getting the 4A and 4B Boards involved in guiding the project through and getting the Cedar Park Veterans Memorial Citizen Committee involved in the veterans museum.

“It’s a chance for us to work together,” O’Toole said.

Lemon approached Austin Community College to garner interest in a partnership on the project, and he said the representative he spoke to was interested and said she would take it to their board.
Mayor Pro Tem Matt Powell, who works at Concordia University in Austin, said he would like to take the idea to the university to see if it would be interested in partnering as well. Powell said he saw the project as a possible way to bring an IMAX theater to Cedar Park, something he wanted but did not materialize for the 1890 Ranch development.

“It’s something I never really let go of,” he said.

Powell said the IMAX theater could show educational films and other movie genres. He used the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum in Austin as an example, saying the museum brings in a lot of money by showing films like “The Dark Knight” and “Avatar.”

The Council as a whole, minus absent councilmen Cobby Caputo and Mitch Fuller, showed interest in the idea.

Both Lemon and Councilman Scott Mitchell said it was a great idea, and the first step should be to give the public a chance to comment and gauge how much interest there is. The rest of the Council agreed.
“That’s really important to know what other people think,” Councilman Tony Dale said.
He added it was important to have a strong involvement in the project from the private sector to make the science center idea sustainable.

The Council decided to move forward with the idea by creating an ad hoc committee to work on it and discuss it at the next Council meeting.

Other Council action

The Council appointed seven people to the Public Arts Board. Andy deBruyn, Paul Gorski, Joe Fiacco, Geraldine Smythe, Robert Carter, Sheela Goodrich and Mark Ledyard were all appointed to the newly formed board and will serve two-year terms.

The Council decided to send Lemon and Powell to Washington D.C. to meet with Congressional staffers and legislators to seek funding for road projects. They will be meeting lobbyist Travis Lucas in D.C. in early March.

Assistant City Manager Jose Madrigal said the transition between solid waste providers is almost finished. Red River has not collected all of its equipment yet, but Red River has until Feb. 15 to collect the rest of its trash carts from local residents. Any stray carts left after that date will be picked up by Cedar Park Disposal.