An abandoned, 22-story building in Lake Charles, Louisiana — once an icon in the city that became a symbol of destruction from hurricanes Laura and Delta — is scheduled to be demolished Saturday after sitting vacant for nearly four years.

Weather permitting, the implosion of The Hertz Tower will take place around 8 a.m. (CT). The tower is expected to collapse down to four or six stories, according to the city’s website.

The building, formerly known as the Capital One Tower, has been a dominant feature of the city’s skyline for more than four decades. However, after a series of hurricanes ripped through southwest Louisiana in 2020, the building became an eyesore, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.

For years the owners of the building, the Los Angeles-based real estate firm Hertz Investment Group, promised to repair the structure once they settled with their insurance provider Zurich in court, The Advocate reported. The estimated cost of bringing the building back up to code was $167 million. Eventually, the two parties settled for an undisclosed amount.

The demolition is being funded by $7 million in private money secured by the city. Hertz still owns the property and the future of the site is undetermined, according to the city.

Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter described the planned implosion of the building as “bittersweet.”

“I know how hard the city tried to work with several development groups to see it saved, but ultimately … it proved to be too tall a task,” said Hunter, who was in office during the hurricanes. “At this juncture, I am ready for a resolution. It’s been four years. It’s been long enough.”

Lake Charles, which sits on the banks of the Calcasieu River and is a two hours’ drive from Houston, is home to around 80,000 residents. While the city is known for its copious amounts of festivals, bayous, casinos and its Cajun flair, it also has been labeled by the Weather Channel as America’s “most-weather battered city.”

Hurricane Delta crashed ashore in southern Louisiana in October 2020 just six weeks after Laura took a similar, destructive path onto the U.S. Gulf Coast. At the time, Lake Charles was already reeling from damage caused by Laura, which battered roofs, claimed more than 25 lives in the region and left mud and debris filling streets.

The Hertz tower offers an example of the city’s long road to recovery following back-to-back hurricanes that inflicted an estimated $22 billion in damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.

While there are signs of rebuilding and growth in much of Lake Charles, there are still buildings that remain in disarray and residents living in the same conditions as four years ago — waiting for financial relief to rebuild their homes, looking for affordable housing after the hurricanes’ destruction exacerbated the housing crisis or stuck in court with their insurance provider to get a fair payout.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – With property insurance costs in Louisiana spiraling out of control, seniors are increasingly turning to reverse mortgages for financial relief.

Alison Calamaia at America’s Mortgage Resource says she’s been getting more calls from homeowners asking about reverse mortgages.

“A lot of my calls start with clients asking about whether or not they should get a reverse mortgage,” said Calamia. “My next question is why are you calling? What has occurred that made you make this phone call? Currently, they say my insurance just went through the roof.”

A majority of Calamia’s clients are in their golden years and on fixed incomes. She says the soaring cost of homeowners insurance creates a financial burden many of them can’t afford because they never anticipated the price of insurance premiums to climb so high.

“I currently have a woman right now, her insurance went from $3,000 to $14,000. She can’t afford to pay that any longer,” she said. “She does have a mortgage on her property, and she might lose her house if she can’t make that mortgage payment.”

Even those without mortgages, like Cheron Brylski of Uptown New Orleans, are feeling the pressure. Brylski put her home up for sale earlier this summer, citing property insurance and taxes as key reasons for her decision.

“It’s basically making living in a house that I own, and I own outright, impossible for me to stay here,” Brylski told us in June.

Calamia said the fear of losing one’s “forever” home is becoming more common among her clients.

“Most of the time it’s the house where they raised their children. And we live in the South. We don’t want to leave that house. We want to stay put,” she explained.

INSURANCE CRISIS

To stay put, Calamia says a growing number of people are considering reverse mortgages to create another line of money. Details of mortgages and reverse mortgages can be confusing and often filled with financial language unfamiliar to many people. That can often lead to several myths about reverse mortgages said Calamia, who tried to boil down the information for this reporter to understand.

“In a nutshell, it is a mortgage against the home that allows for a percentage of the property value to be used as a stream of monthly income, a line of credit, or a lump sum to pay existing mortgages, but it does not come with a monthly payback as long as the borrower lives in the home. They do have to pay taxes and insurance, but there’s not that principal and interest part of it. In essence, the house is going to pay for the principal that they would receive and the interest on it over time instead of physically making a traditional mortgage payment, the house is paying for it,” said Calamia.

The borrower can use the line of cash or credit generated through a reverse mortgage to pay for things like property insurance. Calamia says reverse mortgages often get a bad reputation. Much of her work involves walking clients through a process to determine if a reverse mortgage would be appropriate for their financial situation.

“One of the biggest reasons myths about reverse mortgages is I can’t get a reverse mortgage if I still owe money on my home. That’s not true. However, in a reverse mortgage the available funds, which is a percentage of the property value, there needs to be enough in the reverse mortgage to pay off that mortgage plus cover the closing costs. We don’t have any out-of-pocket cost so the cost of getting the loan is worked into the loan. People also think they won’t keep the title to their home. They do keep that title as long as they just live in it. And one day, when the mortgage is due and payable, which is usually after the borrower has sold the property or has permanently moved out of the home. When the loan becomes due and payable, any amount that was given to the borrower is paid back along with interest on it over time. There’s no end date. The date is when they no longer live there usually after death,” Calamia said.

Reverse mortgages may not be suitable for everyone. But during a time when many people are trying to find ways to cover the cost of sky-high property insurance, Calamia believes it can help seniors stay in their forever homes.

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