In the 1960s plans were made to create a new facility for the Museum, and prominent local physician and philanthropist (and one of the Museum's "founding-fathers"), W.D. Sugg, felt strongly that the new space should house a planetarium. While there was a consensus among the board that the new facility should have an auditorium, Sugg envisioned a dual-purpose facility that could serve as both auditorium and planetarium similar to the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The inspiration of the Hayden would come full circle in 2004 when the museum hired its current Planetarium Director, Jeff Rodgers, who worked at the American Museum of Natural History with world-renowned physicist and Hayden director, Neil Degrasse Tyson.