HUD withdraws deadline for downtown move

By Jay F. Marks

Published: June 4, 2006

There is no longer a deadline for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development employees in Oklahoma City who hope to avoid a move to the new downtown federal building.

About a dozen people had faced a Monday deadline to relocate from an alternate work site.

Agency spokesman Jerry Brown said those employees once again have been given additional time to make their case to the committee that considers workplace issues.

"We're trying to work with them," he said.

The employees who have not moved into the new federal building, which opened in 2004, balked because of the proximity to the old building.

The old Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was about half a block away. It was destroyed April 19, 1995, by a bomb that resulted in the deaths of 168 people.

Brown said employees who do not feel they can work at the new site can submit their medical evaluations to the agency's reasonable accommodation committee.

The affected employees are working at the site at 500 W Main St. that the agency occupied after the bombing.

Two deadlines have been allowed to pass since the employees were informed in March that their requests to continue working there had been denied.

Brown said the agency must decide in August whether to exercise its option to lease the space for another year, regardless of the ongoing appeals.

"That's not going to be the determining factor," he said.