Hurricane-ravaged skyscraper haunts Lake Charles residents, officials. What will happen to it?
LAKE CHARLES – It stands over this city as a constant reminder, dozens of its windows blown out and boarded up, the once-soaring lobby dark and skeletal, a chain-link fence surrounding it all.
Nearly a year and a half after Hurricane Laura ripped through downtown, the biggest office tower in Lake Charles still sits vacant and in ruins. The Category 4 storm and its 150 mph winds, one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the state, shattered much of the building’s aqua-green glass facade, raining shards on the city center and leaving Lake Charles with a highly visible eyesore as it tries to rebuild.
Officials are grappling with the idea of whether the Capital One Tower will have to be razed and what that could mean for the city and its small but historic downtown. How it plays out will be a key factor in Lake Charles’ post-disaster development. Built in the early 1980s, the 22-story tower has served as a calling card, its angular glass sides pointing like the prow of a ship toward the lake that gave the city its name.
“We would love to see it put back into commerce,” Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said. “However, the worst thing to happen would not be for it to be torn down. The worst thing to happen would be for it to continue to exist in its current state for an extended period of time, and the city just simply will not allow that to happen.”
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