We report on the preliminary results of an extensive search for OH/IR stars in the Galactic center region. The main goal is to use the larger sample of OH/IR stars to probe the gravitational potential in the Galactic center (see Lindqvist, Habing & Winnberg 1992b). The search in the 1612 MHz line of OH was performed by observations taken with the Australia Telescope Compact Array and by means of concatenating Very Large Array data sets used for a monitoring program (Van Langevelde et al. 1993). The volume surveyed is over 80 pc in diameter centered on Sgr A^* and has a velocity coverage of -550 to +600 km s^-1. The 1\sigma noise is about 5 mJy, at least four times as deep as earlier surveys. So far we have found about 50 new OH/IR stars, almost as many as we expected. The newly found OH/IR stars seem to be similar in their observable properties to the OH/IR stars already known in the Galactic center. In our data we have found OH counterparts for two H_2O masers detected by Levine et al. (1995) and by Yusef-Zadeh & Mehringer (1995). These H_2O masers are not the argued clues for recent star formation: the objects are old OH/IR stars (Sjouwerman & Van Langevelde 1996).