photo by: Bremen Keasey

Lawrence's City Hall, located at 6 E. Sixth St., shown during June 2025.

City of Lawrence offices will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday and Friday, and other services and facilities will have some changes in their operations too, the city announced in a news release Monday.

Here’s how services will be affected this week:

Trash and recycling: No trash, recycling or yard waste will be collected on Thanksgiving Day. Collection service will instead be delayed by one day for residential customers. Routes normally collected on Thursday will be collected on Friday, and regular Friday routes will be collected on Saturday; customers whose trash is collected on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday will see no changes. There will also be no roll-off service on Thursday or Friday; it will resume Monday, Dec. 1.

Public transportation: Fixed-route buses, paratransit and on-demand service from Lawrence Transit will not operate on Thursday. Regular service will resume on Friday. Central Station will be closed from Wednesday through Friday.

Parking: Parking meters, lots and garages in downtown Lawrence will be free on Thursday and Friday. Users of the city’s mobile payment app can also get two hours of free parking on Saturday; enter the code “ParkLawrence25” at the confirmation/checkout page.

Parks and Recreation programs: The administrative office for the Parks, Recreation and Culture department will be closed on Thursday and Friday, and some facilities will be closed or have different hours for part of the week.

• Recreation centers: All city recreation facilities will be closed on Thursday, and Sports Pavilion Lawrence will have different hours on Friday. It will open at 7 a.m. Friday instead of the normal time of 5:30 a.m.; it will still close at 9 p.m. like usual. There will be no changes to the hours of any of the other rec centers on Friday.

• Indoor Aquatic Center: The indoor pool will be closed on Thursday, and its hours will be different on Wednesday and Friday. The times set aside for lap swimming and warm water workouts are different than usual, and the zero-depth children’s area and diving area, which are normally closed on weekdays, will be open for part of the day on Wednesday and Friday. For a complete list, go to lawrenceks.gov/prc/aquatics/iac.

• Prairie Park Nature Center: The center is closed to the public Monday to Friday this week, though it will be operating some of its already scheduled programs. It will return to its normal operating hours on Saturday.

• Eagle Bend Golf Course: The course is closed on Thursday, but it will open again on Friday. An employee told the Journal-World the first tee time would be at 10 a.m., which is two hours later than usual.