Eastern Kentucky University’s Board of Regents heard an update on the campus’ Hummel Planetarium during their quarterly meeting this week.
The planetarium has been closed since the COVID-19 pandemic with no timeline for reopening, and university officials are concerned about upkeep expenses.
Panels are slowly sliding off the planetarium’s walls, and Campus Operations Officer Bryan Makinen says that can pose problems down the line.
“If we were to have an emergency situation where the bricks come off, it's going to be extraordinarily disruptive to the operations within that space. There's no question to that,” he said. “At the very least, how people enter and exit the building, but there will come a period of time where we do have to sever the utilities.”
EKU officials presented several options for the planetarium. That includes completely reopening it, restoring it as an event space, restoring the building without operating it or demolishing it entirely.
Historically, the planetarium makes around $200,000 from schools each year. It would cost around $11 million for EKU to completely restore and reopen the planetarium, including $9 million for the dome. In comparison, it would cost around $800,000 to raze the building.
A fifth option would use projectors from the school’s Black Box Theatre for new, immersive presentations.
EKU Chief of Staff Colleen Chaney says that option would cost around $200,000, and would be the most cost-effective for the university.
“It's, in relation, a pretty small dollar investment, related comparatively to $11.2 (million). It also allows the technology to upgrade with that much easier and, quite candidly, gets a lot more use out of that.”
Any decision for the planetarium would have to be figured into the school’s budget for the next fiscal year.
The Rauch Planetarium at the University of Louisville has also been closed since the pandemic.
