Look up at those spiky spires crowning 390 North Orange Avenue, and you're eyeing a building with more identity changes than a spy novel protagonist. The Bank of America Center has been one of downtown Orlando's most recognizable landmarks for decades—and each name change tells its own juicy chapter in Florida's wheeling-dealing real estate saga.
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A Du Pont Dream That Never Quite Materialized
Spring 1985: William DuPont III, flush with at least $125 million (thanks, Forbes), rolled out plans for "du Pont Centre," a sprawling 10-acre mixed-use wonderland in downtown Orlando. Price tag? A cool $400 million, with the centerpiece tower clocking in at $78 million.
Orlando was absolutely cooking. Developers were printing money downtown, and DuPont's Pillar-Bryton Company wanted in. Plot twist: the heir's grand vision face-planted. Financial woes forced him out in the '90s, and that ambitious 10-acre empire? Never got past this one building.
Bank of America Center: How a Postmodern Gothic Tower Was Born
Morris-Aubry Architects waltzed in from Texas (fresh off Austin's One American Center in 1984) and decided Florida needed some drama. What popped up in 1988? A postmodern office tower sporting 10 theatrical spires that screamed medieval castle vibes against the subtropical sky. The staircase riffed on their Houston Bank of America design, basically their architectural mic drop that said "forget boring glass boxes."
Perfect timing, too. The SunTrust Center opened the same year at 200 South Orange, matching the tower's 441-foot height. Together, these two postmodern towers basically announced to the Orlando skyline: "We're all grown up now, folks."
The Name Game: Banking Consolidation Hits Downtown Orlando
The building's name became a greatest hits album of Southeast banking consolidation. It rocked the NationsBank logo during Hugh McColl's merger feeding frenzy, when NCNB was gobbling up competitors en route to becoming Bank of America. Threw on the Barnett Bank Center name for a while too, basically whoever was winning at corporate Monopoly that decade slapped their name on top.
When Private Equity Came to Downtown Orlando
The ownership story from 2009 on? Pure real estate speed dating:
September 2009: Eola Capital swept in, grabbing the tower as part of a massive $1.1 billion, 22-building shopping spree from Miami's America's Capital Partners.
April 2011: Parkway Properties absorbed it through a $462 million merger with Eola Capital. Next!
January 2018: San Diego's Southwest Value Partners dropped $81.86 million—part of a $208 million downtown Orlando buying binge that included two other office buildings. They even called in HKS, Inc. for a makeover later that year.
City National Bank Tower: A New Name for a New Decade
City National Bank of Florida made its power move in January 2020: 13,500 square feet leased, but more importantly, naming rights secured. By June, fresh signage declared the building's latest identity: City National Bank Tower.
For the Miami-based bank, wrangling over $26 billion in assets after 75 years in Florida, it was genius. Instant Orlando street cred, while Southwest Value Partners scored that golden ticket: a legit institutional anchor to keep the building relevant in a cutthroat market.
Bank of America Center Today: Orlando's Fifth-Tallest Skyline Landmark
Today, this 28-story, 404-foot beauty ranks as Orlando's fifth-tallest building. Those quirky spires still steal the show from I-4 or anywhere in the downtown Orlando skyline, a gothic exclamation point in a city going all-in on glass and steel conformity.
The building's journey, from DuPont's oversized dreams through banking merger mania to private equity hot potato and finally institutional stability, is basically 40 years of American commercial real estate crammed into one address. Whether you know it as the Bank of America Center or City National Bank Tower, this spired survivor keeps doing its thing, still defining an Orlando skyline that grew up around it.
Sources:
https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/news/2011/04/11/parkway-pays-462m-for-chunk-of-eola.html
https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/bank-of-america-center/10298
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2009/09/18/eola-capital-bulks-up/
