SAN MARCOS - Palomar College is moving forward with plans to construct a state-of-the-art planetarium on its San Marcos campus that would double as lab space for astronomy, art history and cinema programs and is projected to open by 2010.

The $6.9 million planetarium, to be sandwiched between the new Natural Sciences Building and existing library, will allow the college to replace and modernize the existing 43-year-old facility, which will be removed to make way for new buildings, Kelley Hudson-MacIsaac, the college's manager of facilities planning, said Tuesday.

Voters approved a $694 million facilities bond in November that will allow the college to embark on a 15-year construction boom that calls for 15 new buildings and renovations to 15 others, college officials said.

"It's an opportunity to be a gem and jewel here on campus," said Mark Lane, astronomy professor and director of the planetarium. "The current technology is far ahead of where it was 43 years ago. This will be more state-of-the-art."

A new planetarium will not only be an asset for Palomar students who use it to visualize what they're learning in class, but also for the community, as shows like "The Sky Tonight" and "Stellar Nurseries and Cosmic Graveyards" are well-attended by the public the first Friday of each month, Lane said. In addition, roughly 5,000 schoolchildren visit the facility on field trips each year to learn about constellations and the solar system, he said.

"Graphically, the displays they will see will be more realistic," he said, adding that he hopes the new facility will allow for expanded public shows and more modern technology, he said.

In 2000, Palomar purchased a $600,000 Digistar II projector, which projects star images onto the "sky" in a digital format, he said, describing it as a modern system that was put into an old building.

However, any pictures that are projected onto the dome are done with slide projectors, which are less versatile than their digital counterparts, he said. For example, digital projection can be used to animate images to make it appear as though the audience is flying through the galaxy.

"They don't even make those machines we have anymore, they're so old," Lane said.

During their governing board meeting Tuesday, Palomar trustees certified an environmental document called a "mitigated negative declaration," prepared to identify potential impacts the 5,000-square-foot project would have on categories like traffic and noise.

Such mitigated negative declarations are used when developers do not expect the effects of a project to pose significant concerns that would require and environmental impact report, said Hudson-MacIsaac.

Declarations were also certified for a $40 million, 100,000-square-foot multidisciplinary building and extensive renovations to a building that will provide much needed space for Palomar's growing number of nursing and dental assisting students.

"These are three projects that occur in already disturbed areas," Hudson-MacIsaac said, adding that the projects would be located where buildings already exist. "The impacts are pretty much construction-related and not environmental-related."

The college plans to address construction traffic and noise by developing a traffic plan and using equipment that will provide the lowest level of noise during construction, she said. An archeological monitor will be hired to remain on the site during grading and construction to ensure that there are no significant impacts to cultural resources, Hudson-MacIsaac said.

An architect is slated to be assigned to the planetarium project early next week, she said.

- Contact staff writer Noelle Ibrahim at (760) 761-4404 or nibrahim@nctimes.com.