Interesting Facts About The Capital One Tower Building

If you think about downtown Lake Charles or drive through it, the first thing you notice is the towering Old Capital One Tower Building. For years, it has been the staple landmark in downtown Lake Charles along with the Lake Charles Civic Center.

Last week, we did a story about some very interesting facts about the Lake Charles Civic Center like did you know there is a ship buried under the Civic Center grounds? See all the interesting facts about the civic center here.

After doing that story, we started thinking about the other iconic building in downtown Lake Charles which is the Old Capital One Tower. As it sits currently, the damage is just stunning as category 4 hurricane Laura basically destroyed the entire South side of the building with a ton of damage also on the North side as well. It sits now abandoned with a ton of wooden windows.

We thought it would be cool to go back to its heyday when the building was fully functional and housed a ton of businesses and a bank.

Erik Tee

Here are some Interesting Facts About The Old Capital One Tower Building In Lake Charles

Construction on the building started in 1981 with completion in 1982.

A year later, the grand opening of the building was on October 1st, 1983.

It cost 45 million dollars to build to skyscraper.

There are 22 floors in the building, two escalators in the atrium, and eight elevators.

From ground to roof, the building stands 314 feet.

The building houses 400,000 square feet of office space.

When it was first built, it was called the CM Tower named after the old Calcasieu Marine National Bank. It was then bought by Hibernia Bank and named the Hibernia Tower until Capital One Bank acquired Hibernia Bank and the tower was then renamed the Capital One Tower in 2005.

The tower takes up four acres which includes an attached parking garage.

The building features an all-glass exterior finish and the building has six sides.

Neat huh? The big question for folks in Lake Charles and Southwest Louisiana is, when are they going to fix it or just take it down? What are your thoughts? Should the current owners, Hertz Investment Group, fix the damage or take the tower down? We will have to see.

Back in January of 2023, it was announced that a settlement was reached with the Hertz Investment Group's insurance company. Mayor Nic Hunter was quoted back when the report came out,

Hertz has two years from the end of November 2022 to make the repairs or demolish the building, Hunter said. --Source Lake Charles American Press

Then in March of this year, Hertz Investment Group, the owner of the Capital One Tower announced that it would list the hurricane-damaged building for sale. It now been abandoned since 2020 and there has not been any word the company has had any interest in someone buying the building.

Below are a bunch of pictures of what the tower looked like on the inside before Hurricane Laura damaged the tower.