PHOTO GALLERY: High Ceilings and Sweeping Views Inside the New Rockville District Courthouse

The yellow caution tape in front of the new District Courthouse's entrance at Maryland Avenue and East Jefferson Street has not deterred a few determined visitors.

Carl Fox recently found a man wandering around the lobby.

"I've got to get to court," the man said.

"Well, you're late," replied Fox, the state Department of General Services project manager for the still-under-construction courthouse.

He also was in the wrong place if he had a District Court date. That will change in June, when the Rockville District Court moves from across East Jefferson Street to its new six-story, $60 million home.

Court employees are scheduled to move in on June 20, with the first dockets on June 27, Fox said. Bad weather and delayed safety inspections pushed the scheduled opening date back from December to February to June.

On Wednesday, about 30 people, including members of the Town Center Action Team, toured the 167,000-square-foot building. Crews have to repaint nicked up walls, set ceiling tiles and test computer systems, security doors and alarms in preparation for final inspections. 

The building has amassed $1.5 million in change orders, but is still within a contingency set aside by the state to cover cost overruns, Fox said.

One unexpected extra expense has been a solution to the high-intensity reflection of the sun off the bank of windows on the building's south facade. Late last fall, construction workers and passersby noticed that the reflection—dubbed the ""—heated up the sidewalk along Vinson Street and scorched bushes in front of Rockville City Hall.

"You'll never get me to call it a death ray, but it does tend to get quite hot," Fox said.

A test found temperatures reaching 240 degrees on the outside surface of a car parked in the City Hall lot, he said.

"We took it seriously and that's when we had to put the banner up," he said.

, a 94-foot-by-134-foot tarp, that TBD.com reported cost $30,000 to install in January was by high winds on Feb. 19.

"We tried to do the right thing and get a banner up," Fox said. "But you can't fool Mother Nature."

The state replaced the tarp in March and is now pricing a permanent fix, Fox said.

Fox showed visitors an outside screen that had been installed on a lower window on the south facade. The screen reduces the sun's glare off the windows by 73 percent, he said.

Crews have a window of opportunity from April through September to find a fix, Fox said. After that time, the angle of the sun is such that the reflection will once again begin to collect into an intense beam. Models show the reflection will be at its strongest on the winter solstice, Dec. 21, he said.

Fox said he watched on afternoons this winter as the beam formed in the City Hall parking lot and slowly moved across the front of the building.

"By 5 p.m. I've seen it on the entrance to City Hall," he said.

Note: The dormant Rockville Central site has photos from a tour of the courthouse in July. Compare and contrast those with our latest gallery to see the project's progress.