A new Spartanburg planetarium promises to be a stellar attraction for the city and the region. The project, which received preliminary design approval from the city’s Design Review Board on August 1st, is expected to break ground this fall.
Located at the corner of Broad and Church streets, the planetarium will be at the Spartanburg County Headquarters Library.
The 50-foot planetarium dome will be the largest in the Upstate and is a central feature of the 10,000-square-foot, 125-seat theatre designed to show traditional planetarium programming or movies on an 8-degree tilting screen.
Classrooms are also part of the first-floor expansion. The second floor will house the Spark Space, a maker’s lab, and other offices and programming spaces. A third floor will accommodate more library offices, allowing the library to allocate more of its space to programming.
A civic center-style plaza is being designed at the corner of Church and Broad streets with planters, trees, and public seating. The plaza will also serve as a bus stop area for city, school, and recreational buses aimed at providing safer and easier access to the library and the planetarium.
The Spartanburg planetarium project is scheduled for final approval this fall; after around 12 months of construction, it could open to school groups and visitors from around the Upstate in late 2024. The library expansion and planetarium project are a collaboration between the Spartanburg County Public Libraries, the Spartanburg County Council, the City of Spartanburg, and McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture.
You can read more about this planetarium project in the Post and Courier or Upstate Business Journal.