By Ashley Porter | 15 March 2010 | News 8 Austin

About a month after discussions began among the Cedar Park City Council, the city created an ad-hoc committee to explore the feasibility of a major project that would include a planetarium.

“There are a lot of other things that encompass it, the planetarium just being one side of it. There’s other things like the science center, [art] galleries, the community space, even possibly looking at an IMAX theatre was also mentioned,” Cedar Park Assistant City Manager Jose Madrigal said.

Currently, the plan also includes a veteran’s museum.

Madrigal said discussions began after the growing success of the Cedar Park Center, alongside plans to bring a Schlitterbahn water park to the area.

“We’ve just got a concept and a vision, and we want to grow it out and reach it to its potential,” Madrigal said.

Austin is also considering a planetarium.

Austin Planetarium has worked for several years toward building one. The nonprofit had pre-conceptual designs created last year to show what the planetarium, science center and technology center might look like. The group raised $500,000 toward the construction of the project so far.

“We need a planetarium. Yes, we need a large-scale science museum,” Austin Planetarium Executive Director Torvald Hessel said. “There are 13 planetariums in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We have none here.”

Austin is one of the largest cities in the country without a planetarium. The closest ones are located in San Antonio and Killeen.

Hessel said multiple locations in downtown Austin are under consideration, including one near the Long Center for the Performing Arts, and another along the southeast corner of Congress Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. He said he considers it a compliment that Cedar Park also sees the need for a science center.

“Eventually, I can see definitely a working partnership between the two facilities,” Hessel said.

Cedar Park is still in the exploratory phase, and there’s no solid schedule for when results might trickle down the pipeline.

“We’re still at the very beginning of the process, and we’re really getting excited to get ready to start going,” Madrigal said.