Abilene's Indoor Week Was Rebuilt This Spring, and the Biggest Piece Is Free
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
Where did an Abilene family go on a cold or rainy afternoon in 2025? The city's own recreation centers weren't an option. Sears and G.V. Daniels were rebuilt at the same time, so for about two years Abilene had no city rec center open at all.
That ended on April 22, 2026. A month later, The Grace Museum opened a science center at Abilene Heritage Square. With the weather turning, the two kinds of places work together. The rec centers cover ordinary weekdays at no cost to resident households. The science center is the ticketed outing you plan around. The free part is the easiest to skip, though, because it starts with an in-person sign-up and the right documents.
The West Texas Tribune covered the April 22 openings. G.V. Daniels had its grand opening first, and Sears had a ribbon-cutting an hour later. Both rebuilds came out of a $28 million investment funded by bonds voters approved in the 2023 city election. Building them at the same time cut the overall cost by about 5%, but it left Abilenians with no recreation center during the two-year construction.
David Pittman, vice chair of the Abilene Parks and Recreation Committee, told the Tribune the overlap "was really inconvenient." He added, "we knew long-term we'd be able to provide something special for everybody here."
Each center also houses a branch of the Abilene Public Library, so each address is a gym, a game room, a classroom and a library in one building:
The Tribune reported that the two centers have identical layouts, based on what Abilene residents asked for. Each has a classroom, a gaming room, a library, a basketball court and a workout space.
Pittman told the Tribune, "I'm a basketball nerd, so I'm super excited to have an interior space that people can come in and shoot hoops whenever they want to." Mayor Weldon Hurt described the design to the same outlet as a place where people can "work on our physical body and we can work on our mental body at the same time at the same facility."
The cost to an Abilene household is nothing. Per the Abilene Parks & Recreation catalog, the annual resident membership is free and covers the whole immediate household living at the same primary address. Nonresidents pay $30 a year or $5 for a day pass. You also need a membership to register for the paid classes on the city calendar.
The membership can't be set up online. Here's how to get one:
The city's online catalog doesn't list the centers' own hours, so check abilenetx.gov/recreation before you go. The branch libraries inside both buildings keep the same hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Twenty-four days after the rec centers reopened, Spark Science Center had its grand opening on May 16, 2026. The opening also featured the restored Owen Hall and the Heritage Event Center. Spark is The Grace Museum's second location and sits on the south side of the Abilene Heritage Square campus at 1620 S. Third St. It has a large lot of its own, entered from South Third Street.
The floor is divided into six areas, and the best way to describe each is by what kids get to touch:
| Area | What's hands-on |
|---|---|
| Biology & Medicine | An interactive sand table and a giant dinosaur footprint that rumbles and shakes underfoot |
| Chemistry & Environment | A life-size periodic table, a weather station on how fog, hurricanes and tornadoes form, and a molecule-building station |
| Engineering & Technology | A technology timeline that starts at a rotary dial phone, an earthquake shake table and simple machines |
| Energy & Physics | A flight simulator, a rocket cage, a plasma ball, a magnetic cloud and circuit building |
| Space & Astronomy | A star life-cycle exhibit, a planetarium experience on preserving the night sky and a telescope simulation |
| Careers & Outdoor | A water table with a water wheel and Archimedes' screw, plus a sound station, bubbles, Rube Goldberg machines and a car derby track |
Spark charges admission, which is why it works best as the planned outing. General admission is $14 for adults and $8 for children 4 and older, seniors 65 and older, college students, educators and retired military with ID. Children under 4 get in free. Active-duty military and their families pay half price with ID, and households with SNAP benefits can get a discount. Two adults and two children 4 or older pay $44 at standard rates, or $22 for an active-duty family from Dyess. One ticket for the rec centers would cost an Abilene household nothing.
If you want to make a full day of it, a same-day ticket covering Spark and The Grace downtown costs $20 for adults and $10 for the reduced-rate groups. Grace members get unlimited admission to both locations all year, two free guest passes and discounts on camps and classes at both sites.
Plenty of kids will have seen Spark before their parents do. With support from Oracle, The Grace Museum is offering free field-trip admission to Spark for every 5th grader in Region 14 public school districts during the 2026-2027 school year.
The schedules overlap neatly. Spark is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last admission at 4:55, and is closed Sunday and Monday. The branch libraries are open Monday, which covers the day Spark is closed, and both buildings run storytimes early in the week. Here's how the fall schedule lines up:
Two holiday closures at Spark are worth marking now. It closes November 26 and 27 for Thanksgiving and December 24 and 25 for Christmas. The full Grace and Spark calendar is on The Grace Museum's events page, and the rec center programs are on the city's Parks & Recreation calendar.
On a week like that, a family only pays for the Spark visit. Everything else is covered by a membership that costs a resident household nothing and only takes one in-person sign-up with a photo ID and proof of residency.
Whether you're settling in near Ambler Avenue or just arrived on orders to Dyess and want to know where the indoor gyms and storytimes are, the team at Elite Real Estate Group can help you get oriented in town. Contact us and we'll walk you through Abilene the way people here actually use it.
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