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Marion County‘s Courthouse Square office building and transit mall will reopen April 7 in downtown Salem after a four-year, $23 million rehabilitation project.

The work, performed by Hanover, Md.-based Structural Preservation Systems LLC, included increasing the size of the building’s columns, strengthening columns with a carbon fiber reinforced polymer and replacing the paver system on the transit mall, said John Lattimer, county administrator.

Marion County and Salem-Keizer Transit co-own the building, which opened in 2000 and began to experience settling and structural problems soon thereafter.

“The building was poorly engineered, and it was structurally deficient,” Lattimer said.

Marion County and the transit agency engaged in a long dispute with the original project’s contractor and subcontractors and an insurance company, settling for $11.3 million.

After the building was vacated in 2010, workers with the county clerk’s office, elections and other departments as well as regional transportation district workers were dispersed among seven locations, Lattimer said. They will begin slowly moving back into the building next week, he said.

“We finished the project on time and on budget,” he said. “It’s a wonderful building we’re opening. We’re glad to be back.”