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A hand-carved bench, thought stolen from a Bethesda street, was returned Thursday after a misunderstanding that included vandalism, construction workers and a redevelopment site.

The bench, located at the corner of Woodmont Avenue and Elm Street, first went missing between 8 p.m. Feb. 13 and early morning Feb. 14, according to Montgomery County Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur. After apparently being vandalized, the artistically decorated seatback from the bench was found by construction workers who were working on a building near the corner. The workers had brought it inside the building, but returned it to the Bethesda Urban Partnership after reading about the alleged theft in the Feb. 25 edition of The Gazette.

"Someone had kicked it in and it had been vandalized," said David Dabney, executive director of Bethesda Urban Partnership, a nonprofit charged with the maintenance and promotion of downtown Bethesda, which owns the bench. "When the workers came in that morning, they saw the bench and took it inside. It was never actually stolen."

Damage was done to the back of the seatback, but it will be repaired, he said.

The bench—one of 20 on the Bethesda Circulator trolley route, each hand-carved with a piece of poetry inscribed— was first installed in November 2002 as a joint effort of Bethesda Transportation Solutions and state and county groups to make people more aware of the free trolley and bring public art to downtown Bethesda.

Each bench costs $2,500 to replace.

Two other benches have been stolen in the past two years, Dabney said; neither of those has been recovered.

Police currently do not have any leads in the vandalism investigation, according to police spokeswoman Megan Duffey.

Dabney said the bench could be repaired and installed as soon as next week, but since the site is being redeveloped BUP will wait until construction is completed to return the bench.

"We got calls from people all over about the bench," he said. "It's a shame what happened. People love these benches."