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

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.

In the university's announcement, Tech President Charles Steger said he received feedback from faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends of the university. He also consulted with Engineering Dean Richard Benson and ESM faculty. Steger said the decision to reopen Norris was made to enable the engineering college to move forward.

"A lot of people, myself included, feel it's part of the healing process," said Nathan Post, an ESM graduate student who was doing lab work on the first floor during the shootings.

Post said it's been difficult for him and fellow students to walk past the building -- surrounded first by police tape, then later by a fence -- without being able to go into it.

"It's sort of like we've had to grieve for the loss of our building in addition to students and faculty," he said.

The building has been vacant since the shootings and will begin its phased reopening June 18. Norris had one classroom on the third floor and several more 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 the campus was already dealing with overcrowded classes before the shootings. The university's capital outlay plan, approved Monday by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, includes multiple classroom additions and renovation projects.

The Norris classroom space will become offices and 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, killing 30 students and faculty there and then himself. Crews have been working to renovate the floors, ceilings and walls in 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 from 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," Puri 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 schools in the country with programs similar to it: Penn State and Cornell universities, Puri said. About 125 undergraduate students major in engineering, science and mechanics, and the department has 90 graduate students. But it also educates an additional 3,000 students studying architecture or other engineering disciplines.

Puri said the department is unique in its integrated research and teaching methods as well as its interdepartmental approach. Much of that is dependent on its infrastructure, the bulk of which is in Norris. Puri said he and other faculty felt that scattering the department's laboratories and offices would be a devastating blow.

"Not wanting to be nomadic for the next five to 10 years, this appears to be the only pragmatic course of action," he said.

The building's closing has already caused problems for dozens of graduate students and faculty members doing research work there, Puri said. Many of them have grants and contracts for work that they can't do as long as the building is closed.

Puri, who was in his office on the second floor of Norris on April 16 and heard gunshots before being evacuated, said he understands why people would have reservations about returning to the building. He said he would not have a problem returning to the same office space he had, but out of consideration for his staff, his office may be located on a different floor.

Hincker said there are a few faculty and staff members who do not want to return to the building and the university will accommodate them. There will also be counselors on hand when people move back into the building.

But Fred Cook, one of the students who escaped from Liviu Librescu's class by jumping from a second-floor window, said he's happy with the university's decision.

An ESM major who will be a fifth-year senior in the fall, Cook is president of the society of engineering sciences, the department's student group. He said fellow ESM majors with whom he has spoken since the shootings were hopeful that Norris would be reopened.

"For us, our academic lives are in Norris Hall," he said. "We have classes, labs and lounges, and we see our professors there. ... I used to always joke with my friends, 'I live in Norris Hall.' "

Cook was allowed back into the building briefly two weeks after the shootings to gather his things, but the heavy equipment that students rely on for research couldn't be taken out.

"I'm sure it'll be hard walking down the second floor hallway again, but I honestly can't picture myself being anywhere else," he said.

The university has not decided the future of the section of West Ambler Johnston Hall, where the first two victims were shot April 16.

Ideas of what to do with Norris, ranging from demolishing it to memorializing it, had been proposed by people in and around the university community since the shootings. But no memorial will be located there, Hincker said.

Benson said he and his colleagues felt having a memorial elsewhere on campus would be a better way to pay tribute to the victims' lives, not their deaths.

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 Steger, but Tech has not announced any plans.

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

The media will get a chance to view the inside of the building June 14. The university is planning tours for 25 members of the media 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.