The Harborview development was supposed to be the crowning achievement of Richard Swirnow’s successful building career.

Except his investor group collapsed into litigation. His waterfront development site was to be auctioned off. And Swirnow alone didn’t have the money to buy back his dream.

“Richard never faltered,” said David Swirnow, his son. “He would look at me and say, ‘We got to make it happen.’”

And more often than not, Richard Swirnow made it happen. The visionary builder who transformed a derelict shipyard into some of Baltimore’s most exclusive real estate died of heart failure this month at Autumn Lake Healthcare in Baltimore County, his son said. Richard Swirnow was 91 years old.

He leaves his imprint along Key Highway with the Harborview tower, marina, condos and the floating pier homes. That luxury real estate has been home to Ravens and Orioles players, doctors and financiers, even actor Kevin Spacey.

Swirnow came from more humble beginnings. Born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, Swirnow’s father managed a sporting goods store and his mother studied law and was admitted to the New York State Bar, David Swirnow said.

Richard Swirnow showed an entrepreneurial streak from an early age, making deliveries for the corner drugstore. Later, he sold pots and pans door to door while studying industrial engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

He met his future wife, Rae Masry, during a visit back to Brooklyn. Her mother, however, had other suitors in mind. Richard and Rae eloped to Towson then returned to Hopkins, where the dean’s office welcomed the newlyweds into graduate student housing. Grateful, the Swirnows would become longtime Hopkins donors.

“Richard was always indebted to Johns Hopkins,” his son said.

Richard Swirnow sold real estate before drifting into home building after college. He bought tracts of land in Anne Arundel, Carroll and Harford counties and put up houses. He studied all sides of the building industry, including mortgages and title work.

“He was the one who would literally sit up all night and read the fine print,” David Swirnow said.

Ever-searching, Richard Swirnow next bought a brick plant and began selling patterned brick to builders as an early form of architectural brickwork. Rae dabbled in jewelry design and she would help make the patterns. Richard Swirnow would bring the unfired clay bricks home for the kids to carve.

“He wanted to sell a specialty building product,” his son said.

In the early 1970s, he found it with the Hambro joist system, an advanced flooring structure that sets steel joists into concrete walls. The joist system shored up buildings from the headquarters of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to the offices of Walt Disney World, The Baltimore Sun reported. Richard Swirnow was making sales trips up and down the East Coast. The job was wildly successful and demanding.

“On Friday nights and Sunday night, you could count on him to come home for dinner,” David Swirnow said.

In 1984, Richard Swirnow assembled an investor group to buy Bethlehem Steel’s old shipyard off Key Highway in South Baltimore. The 42-acre shipyard had closed, and Swirnow tried first to continue shipbuilding before he made plans to develop the waterfront.

He dreamed of a $600 million project with towers, luxury condos, office space, shopping and a marina. His “city within a city” was celebrated at the time as one of the largest development projects in Baltimore history.

Three years in, however, the investor group collapsed, and the site was headed to a foreclosure auction.

That’s when a fateful tennis match between a foreign banker and one of Swirnow’s attorneys brought forth a new investor, the Bangkok Bank of Thailand. Backed by financiers from Southeast Asia, Swirnow bid $24.4 million to buy back the site at auction.

“I am very pleased and gratified that a project I conceived and began in 1983 has come back home,” he said in a prepared statement after the auction, according to The Sun.

The high-rise condominium tower opened in the 1990s. The building pitted Swirnow against neighbors in Federal Hill — they complained about the construction work, the height and their obstructed views of the water.

In an engineering feat, a parking garage sits under the tower. Later came the floating pier homes known as the Ponte Villas. He sold part of the waterfront to another developer to become The Ritz-Carlton Residences.

A daughter introduced the Swirnows to Lifespring motivation training, a group therapy intended to bring personal growth and revelation. The buttoned-up businessman embraced the program, surprising his three children — Judith, David and Amy — when he grew a beard and wore his hair long.

Richard Swirnow was a longtime supporter of the regional chapter of Easterseals, a national organization that began in 1919 to help disabled children. He organized an annual boat cruise through the harbor for the kids.

He and Rae, who survives him, settled on the 24th floor of the HarborView Towers, with views of the water on three sides. From there, he could see the marina, the condos and the promenade. In summer, there were families, dog walkers and joggers. He could see it all, a community that he built.

He stayed there until almost the end of his life.