Only a small percentage of employees who once occupied Harford County's "Black Box" in Bel Air will return to the building at 212 S. Bond St., even though it's been declared safe to use again.
The three-story building, called the Black Box because of its black facade and cube shape, was vacated in January 2011 after structural engineers warned the building had problems. Employees had complained about cracking walls on the second floor and shaky upper floors.
The county has since had repairs done, and at a cost far less than was first feared.
Members of the public works department are the only ones who have been moving back so far, county spokesman Bob Thomas said Thursday.
In a follow up e-mail Friday afternoon, Thomas wrote that the Department of Public Works, Division of Highways will occupy the entire third floor of the building.
DPW Director Bob Cooper's office will be located on the first floor of the building in the area where the county council members offices formerly were located.
Highways and the director's office were in the building prior to it being condemned.
Thomas said the second floor is still undergoing renovations, painting and the like and will be ready for occupancy in the late spring. The occupant will be named at a later date, he said,
"Other units/entities of Harford County Government are being considered for placement in the building on the first floor," Thomas wrote. "No final decision as to those occupants as of this time."
Among those not moving back, the Cultural Arts Board is staying put at Tudor Hall, the historic Booth family home east of Bel Air, coordinator Natalie Weeks said Thursday.
"We are not moving. We are very happy to stay here," Weeks said, explaining the organization is under the aegis of the Harford County Council.
She said the council asked the board if its members wanted to move, and the board decided it did not.
Harford County Council President Billy Boniface announced last week the council would resume holding its public meetings in the Black Box in February, but it will not move its offices back from another county building at 18 Office St., where they were relocated after the Bond Street building was vacated.
After about a year of borrowing the board of education's chambers for its meetings, "we fortunately are moving home, back to 212 South Bond Street," Boniface said during the Jan. 17 council meeting.
Boniface said the council will hold its first meeting back at the Black Box at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 7, when it will hear public comments on the proposed 2012 county Master Land Use Plan.
"As soon as the county said we have the chance to go home, we took it," Boniface said, thanking the school system for letting the council use its chambers at 104 S. Hickory Ave. for the past year.
"They've been extremely accommodating," he said. "Hopefully we won't have to move again."
Shortly after New Year's 2011, 72 county government employees were abruptly moved to other locations because two engineering reports showed the Bond Street building was structurally unsafe.
At the time, one of the engineers wrote: "I consider the structural stability of the building to be unsafe for occupancy."
Based on his examination of floor beam supports, the engineer recommended immediate stacked shoring of the floor slabs at truss mid-spans down to the ground, a potentially costly fix.
County officials initially said the building might be more costly to repair than to demolish; however, they had another report that suggested the building could be successfully repaired, but not with employees present. Finally, in July, a third evaluation concluded the building could be repaired for between $60,000 and $70,000, so the county let contracts for the work.
The county acquired the building in 1994 for $1.4 million.