Richard A. Swirnow stares out from the dogeared 1990 news clipping. He wears a hard hat, a dark suit and a look of almost pained determination. A "pit bull," the headline calls him in a nod to his tenacity and toughness.
Now 69, the man behind the growing HarborView residential complex off Key Highway in Baltimore has changed. He sports a graying ponytail and a wispy beard. His favored outfit of black shirt and black pants matches his casual manner.
"He's becoming like counter-culture," said Irene Van Sant of Baltimore Development Corp. "I think Richard is pursuing another career as a rock star or something."
Swirnow, who raves about a New Age self-awareness program he took, put it this way: "I just more or less became laid-back."
But not too laid-back. He sends colleagues e-mail in the dead of night. From one of four bathrooms in his 24th-floor HarborView penthouse, he peers through binoculars at workers finishing townhouses below.
"We're not done," he said recently of HarborView. He remains ever focused on getting "the next step done."
The current next step is to build 88 luxury townhouses on and around two piers that will be off-limits to the public. As part of the $60 million project, $10 million in city and state aid will pay for a new bulkhead and public promenade running past the base of the piers. New taxes will more than offset the aid, city officials say.
The houses represent the fourth phase of HarborView, which began in the early 1990s with a 27-story tower; its luminescent top, likened to everything from a beacon to a bug light, looms over the harbor.
Newer additions to the complex include the 164-unit PierSide apartments and the 76 townhouses that he eyes from his bathroom. A smaller tower might yet rise next to the existing one, he said, and the south side awaits development.
It has been 20 years since Swirnow saw in an advertisement that Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s shipyard was up for auction, and 10 or so since he began turning the working-class waterfront into a high-end neighborhood with a suburban feel.
There have been big headaches - squabbles with the neighborhood, financial setbacks, weak condominium sales - but today HarborView has more than 600 residents, many new to the city.
Even critics praise Swirnow for lately reaching out to the surrounding area and winning support from neighborhood groups.
Yet Swirnow cannot claim unanimous support. Plans to rebuild and widen the piers have raised concerns that toxins once used in the shipyard could be stirred up and pollute the air or water.
The Maryland Department of the Environment and federal Army Corps of Engineers have granted permits, deciding an environmental impact study is not required.
State Sen. George W. Della Jr. was hoping for a study. "If you're going to do something, let's do it right and not create any environmental problems," said the South Baltimore Democrat.
"I've lived here all my life," Della added. "They sandblasted ships there. They painted ships there."
Della's call for a study was echoed by Federal Hill resident James Keat and by Troy Powers, whose townhouse is across Key Highway on Covington Street. Powers frets about losing his view but, like Keat, says the key issue is public safety.
Swirnow says there is "absolutely no issue." The permits require a "turbidity curtain" to catch any loosened material. Also, the state wants HarborView to submit a plan for filtering water that must be pumped out to create two-thirds of an acre of fill. And the corps says there must be a plan to compensate for the lost water - perhaps by creating more elsewhere or paying into a fund.
Even before the corps gave its go-ahead Nov. 29, Janet Vine, chief of the district that includes Baltimore, said Swirnow's plan closely resembles one he got permits for in 1988 but never built.
A barge and crane recently appeared between the piers, but only to drive "test piles," said HarborView attorney Frank Wise. The real work has yet to start.
A New Yorker, Swirnow moved to Baltimore to attend the Johns Hopkins University. While an engineering student, he worked in real estate, then switched to homebuilding. In the 1970s he got into commercial construction and prospered after buying patent rights to the Hambro D-500, a floor system.
In 1982, he saw the shipyard ad. Four years later, after disputes with partners and a squabble with then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer over how hard Swirnow tried to keep the yard open, he bought the site for $24.4 million, with help from Bangkok Bank of Thailand. The majority interest is now held by a newer financial partner, Lupert-Adler of Philadelphia.
The tower annoyed many; it was called too tall for an area of old rowhouses. Della, who said Swirnow now shows more respect for neighbors, recalled that "you could tell he would be irritated - how dare a community group question what's going on down there or object."
Swirnow said he has always considered the impact of his development. Three of six proposed towers are off the board for good. It may have been a recognition of economic reality, but it was a voluntary move.
"You shouldn't be doing something that's not socially redeemable," he said.
His personal transformation began in the mid-1990s, and Wise saw it unfold. First Swirnow bought a sporty black Mercedes SLK convertible. Then he stopped wearing a tie, then a suit jacket. He stopped shaving. Then he sprouted a ponytail.
"Eventually you reach a point where you can say I need to be not so concerned anymore," he said.
He resisted when his daughter asked him to take part in a self-awareness program a few years ago, but he agreed to do it with his wife, Rae, and another of their three children. He emerged a new man, he said, better able to communicate.
Swirnow has other reasons to feel good. HarborView has come a ways since the tough early days when few condos sold, and he needed a tax break. In the tower, only 95 of 249 units are condos as opposed to rentals, but the number is rising. Ravens and Orioles players live there, as do corporate executives, giving it cachet. PierSide is mostly leased, and 62 of the 76 new townhouses, some of which have fetched over $1 million, are sold.
But he does not look around in amazement at his creation. "My mind is always looking for problems," he said on a tour of the faux canal he had built.
Once inside his 4,400- square-foot penthouse, with its eight balconies, he grew animated only once. "This," he said near a window overlooking downtown, "is the primo view."
A few days later, though, he sent an e-mail in which he spoke of his pride. He said public subsidies "prime the pump" for development, and projects such as HarborView can be "cash cows" for the city.
He also invoked the HarborView lantern, visible from around the harbor. "The Beacon on the tower," he wrote, "is symbolic of our gesture to beckon back to the City many of those who abandoned the City years ago."