The building at 550 Discovery Blvd. reopened to the public on Saturday, July 11, 2026, after sitting closed since the Cedar Park Public Library moved out in 2024. The city calls it RE|CREATE. It's a Parks and Recreation community center, not a library annex, and it works under a different rule than the building's old tenant did. You don't need a membership, but most activities require advance registration.
Using this address now starts with the city's catalog. The library's own event calendar is still busy, but it now runs out of a different building in the Bell District. Cedar Park's free-time calendar is split across two civic buildings, and each one is reached a different way.
About twenty months dark, then a $4 million remodel
The new Cedar Park Public Library opened on November 1, 2024. The old location closed for half of October so the move could happen. The Discovery Boulevard building then stayed closed until July 2026, about twenty months.
In July 2025, City Council approved a $4 million contract to remodel the space, according to Community Impact. The money came from Community Development Type B funds, which are generated by local sales tax revenue. The city's grand opening announcement puts the funding plainly: when residents shop locally, those dollars come back to the community as projects like this one.
The remodel kept the building's 25,500 square feet and reorganized it around programming. According to the city, the finished facility has:
- Three large multipurpose classrooms
- Two smaller multipurpose rooms
- A flexible theater space that doubles as a multipurpose room
- A large indoor children's play area
Community Impact reported that the work also updated the HVAC system, lighting fixtures and finishes. The city named Johnson, Mirmiran & Thompson as owner's representative, DAHLIN as project architect and Trimbuilt Construction as general contractor.
The room layout explains the access rule. Five classrooms and a theater make a building designed around scheduled sessions with a set number of spots. A library is designed for browsing.
How the front door works now
The city describes RE|CREATE as a program-based facility. It says most activities require advance registration "to ensure the best experience for participants." Program areas include dance, theater, fitness, visual arts, education, homeschool enrichment, senior programming and children's play, for children, teens, adults and seniors.
Registration goes through the city's Cedar Park Parks & Recreation online catalog, which has a location filter for RE|CREATE. Pricing varies by program. Community Impact reported that some programs are free and others charge a fee to help cover hosting costs. For current hours and schedules, the city points residents to cedarparktexas.gov/ReCreate and the Parks and Recreation Department at [email protected].
The no-membership model is easiest to understand next to the city's other Parks and Recreation building. The Cedar Park Recreation Center sells day passes and memberships. Its city facility page lists these resident rates:
- Individual: $5 per day, $20 per month or $180 per year
- Family: $30 per month or $270 per year, with no day rate
- Seniors 60 and older, youth 17 and under, and military: $5 per day, $15 per month or $90 per year
Non-resident rates on the same page are double the individual and family resident rates. The page doesn't show a date, so confirm current pricing with the city before you budget around it.
You pay for access to the Recreation Center. At RE|CREATE, you sign up for one class at a time. That makes RE|CREATE an easy way to try something, like a single arts workshop, without signing up for a monthly plan.
What the first months looked like
The early calendar gives a sense of what the rooms are used for. Community Impact reported that RE|CREATE's August and September activities included cooking classes, arts and crafts workshops, a Mexican heritage celebration and nature immersion therapy sessions. The paper also visited a nature collage program on July 23, where one attendee said that signing up online and showing up was easy. Another attendee told the paper she liked that the city chose to reuse every space in the building instead of leaving it empty.
The opening weekend also included a one-time event for adults. The free July 11 open house ran from 4 to 7 p.m. for families, then switched to a 21-and-up event called After Dark from 8 to 10 p.m., with shows, food and activities. It was part of the grand opening, not a recurring series. Anyone hoping for more adult evening programming should check the catalog.
Parks and Recreation Director Mike DeVito explained the purpose of the building in the city's announcement:
"The focus here with RE|CREATE is really on programming: being able to add a facility that we can utilize for multigenerational programs throughout our parks and rec offerings."
The library's event calendar moved to the Bell District
The other half of the split is in the Bell District. The new Cedar Park Public Library is a two-story, 47,000-square-foot building, nearly double the size of the old one, according to KXAN. It was built as part of the Bell District, a 50-acre mixed-use project along one of the city's oldest main corridors.
The library's event calendar is full of seasonal events for the rest of October, plus one on November 1, and many are listed for all ages:
- Vampires vs. Werewolves for Good, all ages. Sunday, October 18, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
- DÃa de Muertos: Round Rock Ballet Folklórico Performance, all ages. Sunday, October 25, 4:30 to 5:00 p.m.
- DÃa de Muertos: Crafts and Movie, all ages. Sunday, October 25, 5:15 to 6:30 p.m., right after the performance.
- Hand Drumming for Beginners, ages 13 and up. Monday, October 26, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
- Pumpkin Decorating Contest, all ages. Tuesday, October 27, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
- Mini Monster Mash, ages 0 to 5. Thursday, October 29, 10:00 to 10:45 a.m.
- Indigenous Peoples Month Celebration, all ages. Sunday, November 1, 4:30 to 5:00 p.m.
The calendar doesn't say whether these events are free or need a sign-up, so open each listing before you go. The October 25 pairing is the easiest evening to plan. A half-hour folklórico performance leads straight into crafts and a movie, and the whole thing wraps up by 6:30.
Planning a week across both buildings
With the two buildings working differently, it helps to plan ahead. The library publishes its seasonal events on a monthly calendar you can browse. RE|CREATE's classes and workshops are in the Parks and Recreation catalog, and since most need registration, the popular sessions are the ones to book early. The Recreation Center is the option that sells passes by the day, month or year.
The city's investment backs this setup. It put a 47,000-square-foot library in the Bell District, then spent $4 million in local sales tax revenue to give the 25,500-square-foot building it replaced a second life. As quoted by Community Impact, Mayor Jim Penniman-Morin called the new center a place where "everyone is welcome to gather, connect and thrive together."
For a family planning the last two weeks of October, that means two stops. The Bell District library has DÃa de Muertos on the 25th and the pumpkin contest on the 27th. The Rec1 catalog shows what's open at RE|CREATE on Discovery Boulevard the same week.
Projects like RE|CREATE are part of how we keep track of Cedar Park. We follow where the city spends money, what reopens and how each civic building fits into everyday life, and that same research goes into the market updates we give clients. If you want to know how new public spaces like this one are shaping your part of Cedar Park, Golden Real Estate Group is glad to talk it through. Book a Consultation and we'll put together a clear, local read for you.
