Months after the Castle fire, is the rebuild underway?

The scaffolding that encases The Castle in Hampden signals repairs are underway. But the historic building has a long road ahead of it.

Four months after a fire tore through the top of the building, its owner is taking steps to preserve its historic integrity. A timeline isn’t quite clear yet — but it’s likely years — and tenants have had to relocate.

Weeks after the Nov. 10 fire at The Castle, nearby Falkenhan’s Hardware also caught fire. Owner Debbie Falkenhan recently said she hopes to begin cleanup this month and reopen by year’s end. Both fires resulted from electrical accidents, fire officials said, and no one was injured.

Ira Miller, whose LLC owns The Castle, said disaster-recovery company First Choice Services spearheaded the remediation in the past two months, with a focus on water damage.

The scaffolding was erected because workers needed to quickly address loose shingles on the roof, Miller said.

The charred roof is visible from the street. Inside, many systems, including heat and electrical, were badly damaged, he said, as were walls and finishes.

“It is a harder project, considering what we are trying to replace and what we are trying to do, but it’s worth it,” Miller said.

Miller’s 3355 Keswick Road LLC is waiting for an insurance adjuster to assess the damage to the building. That could take months.

The insurance money will help set a budget, and then Miller will work with firms to create building drawings and restoration mock-ups to present to Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation.

After the commission’s sign-off, construction can get underway.

This is not the 1890s-era Victorian building’s first rehab.

It underwent a $4 million renovation when it was sold to private developers in the early 2000s, after the Police Department moved out. That’s also when The Castle earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Wendy Blair said she and other developers went to “great lengths to bring it back to its original elegance” as they converted it into office space.

Blair said she was sorry to hear how badly the slate roof was damaged in the fire, since the sturdy original roof had needed little work.

Meanwhile, tenants — including some who had been there since the earlier renovation — were forced to move.

Amy Petkovsek, executive director for Community Law Center, is still untangling the “whirlwind of a nightmare” the fire caused.

The center, which provides legal services for nonprofits, didn’t skip a beat after the fire, relocating temporarily to Open Works on Greenmount Avenue. The staff quickly acquired Google Voice phone numbers so clients could reach them.

Luckily, they had started moving client information to the cloud the year before, according to Ijeoma Nwatu, the center’s communications director.

The law center now has a temporary lease in a building associated with The Castle, but will eventually need more space, Petkovsek said. She estimates that their insurance will only cover a fraction of the damage.

Miller is unsure who will return to the building once the reconstruction is over.

The Womb Room, an organization that helps families navigate early parenthood, moved to a space in Govans. Their Castle office suffered a lot of water damage, but Christen Schritter, who handles The Womb Room’s social media and marketing, said employees retrieved most of their belongings.

The move added a new level of stress for parents, and The Womb Room is looking for a new permanent home.

“We hope to find a space that we can exist in and thrive,” Schritter said.

It took dressmaker Jill Andrews two weeks to sift through 16 years’ worth of damaged goods and itemize them for her insurance company, she said. The owner of Jill Andrews Gowns is piecing together a new studio on Union Avenue. In that space, she’s next to the cutting board shop Words with Boards, once a neighbor at The Castle.

Much of Andrews’ art, textiles and furniture went into storage at different locations immediately after the fire, and she’s working to get everything organized.

She said she is grateful for community support. Donations to a GoFundMe set up by supporters helped her move into her current space.

Andrews expects she’ll “be feeling the ripple of this for a while,” as her business often schedules a year in advance.