Landmark St. Bernard Parish Courthouse reopens Monday in its 74-year-old home on West St. Bernard Highway after three-year renovation

Employees of a moving company unload office files to bring into the St. Bernard Parish Courthouse, which reopens Monday.

A Sheriff’s Office car is posted behind a moving van on St. Bernard Highway as workers bring equipment into the Courthouse.

It’s been a long time coming – about three years in fact – but the landmark 74-year-old St. Bernard Parish Courthouse reopens Monday after a renovation to remove mold and to remodel.

The place where St. Bernard residents got their marriage licenses, took care of any court business they had and turned out on election nights to see the results posted in the clerk’s office, will be back in its old Art Deco building constructed in 1939 on West St. Bernard Highway in Chalmette.

Home to the 34th Judicial District Court, with its five state court judges, 34-year veteran District Attorney John F. “Jack’’ Rowley and new Clerk of Court Randy Nunez, the building had reopened once after Hurricane Katrina swamped it with flood waters.

But mold returned and spread in the building, forcing a renovation that took a long time to complete.

“I won’t believe it until I’m actually in it,” said state District Judge Jacques Sanborn, who is chief judge of the court this year. “It’s been three years. It was supposed to be a one year project.”

Since it was closed in 2010, the Courthouse which is owned by parish government, has been relocated to a complex of buildings in the old Village Square shopping center on West Judge Perez Drive in Chalmette.

It had neighboring businesses which included a tattoo parlor, restaurants and other assorted shops.

“It hasn’t been a real pleasant experience,” Judge Sanborn said.

But on Monday, Sanborn will be back on the bench in the renovated Courthouse to handle criminal court arraignments, which will be the first court session there.

The other state District judges returning there are Kirk Vaughn, who is the senior judge, Manny Fernandez, Robert Buckley and Perry Nicosia.

It won’t be the same as before in the Courthouse in several ways.

The Assessor’s Office won’t be going back in the Courthouse. The offices of the Assessor are now in a new parish government-owned building at 2118 Jackson, which opened in the fall of 2012, immediately behind the Courthouse. That building is on land that was the old parish jail building before Hurricane Katrina, after the jail building was torn down and FEMA paid for a new building.

Also, there is a new Clerk of Court going into the renovated Courthouse. Randy Nunez, sworn-in last July 1, will be the clerk in a building where he once practiced law.

Most of the renovations to the Courthouse, which cost nearly $14 million, were paid for by FEMA.