Norris Hall, site of 31 of the 33 shooting deaths at Virginia Tech April 16, will reopen in two weeks, the university announced today.

The building will be dedicated to offices and laboratories for the engineering science and mechanics department and the civil and environmental engineering department. Those two departments were the primary occupants of the 70,000-square-foot building before April 16.

The building has been vacant since the shootings and will begin its phased re-use June 18. Norris has one general-purpose classroom on the third floor and several classes on the west wing of its second floor, where the shootings occurred. It accounted for about 5 percent of classroom space on the campus before the shootings but will not be used for classes in the future.

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Tech was already dealing with overcrowded classes before the shootings and class space will continue to be overloaded. The university’s capital outlay plan, passed Monday, includes multiple classroom additions and renovation projects.

The Norris classroom space will be "repurposed" as offices or labs, Hincker said. The university will conduct a feasibility study this summer to determine details of the plan.

Shooter Seung-Hui Cho fired at least 174 rounds of ammunition in and around several of the classrooms. Crews have been working to renovate the floors, ceilings and walls over the past month. ESM department head Ishwar Puri said the area where the shootings occurred has fresh paint, new lights and fresh tile, making it look different than the rest of the floor. Because of that, crews will refurbish offices on the floor as well.

"The thought was that there should be no visual reminders," he said.

Puri has been at Tech for three years, all as head of the department. The department will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year and there are only two programs in the country similar to it, at Penn State and Cornell University, Puri said. He said the department is unique in its integrated research and teaching methods as well as its interdepartmental approach. That’s dependent on the department’s infrastructure, the bulk of which is located in Norris. Scattering the laboratories and offices where teaching and research occur would be a devastating blow to the department, Puri said.

"Not wanting to be nomadic for the next five to ten years, this apppears to be the only pragmatic course of action," he said.

The building was opened for a tour in May by the governor’s panel appointed to investigate the shootings. The media was not allowed to accompany the panel, despite objections from reporters.

Members of the media will get a chance to view the inside of the building on June 14. The university is planning tours of 25 at a time that day. Building access will be limited for an undetermined amount of time to Tech employees, students and department or college visitors. Security officers will be in Norris to check for Hokie Passport identification.

Various ideas of what to do with Norris, ranging from demolition to memorialization, have been proposed by people in and around the university community. But the building will stand and no memorial will be located there, Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said.

"We’re hoping to memorialize the lives, not the passing of those people," Hincker said.

An 18-person committee led by Tom Tillar, vice president for alumni relations, was formed to make recommendations for a memorial on campus. The group has completed its work and sent its recommendations to Tech President Charles Steger, but Tech has not announced plans for a memorial.