Grand Vision for National Harbor Takes Form

"We need to be emotional and patriotic and family-oriented," Weis said. "It's not going to be Disneyland, but it's not Williamsburg either."

Peterson is clearly pleased by models of the two stainless-steel eagles that will soar from 65-foot poles at the top of a long flight of steps leading to the water. (He's dubbed the pair, which cost $700,000 apiece, Martha and George, for the American bald eagles that once nested on National Harbor property.)

Sculptor Stuart Paley shows him the mock-up of the beacon to be erected amidst a stand of birch trees at the National Harbor entrance. It's a modern sculpture shaped vaguely like a torch flame, with tendrils of intertwined steel reaching toward the sky. It is intended to evoke patriotism, freedom, energy, light and creative potential.

Peterson folds his arms, puts one hand on his chin and cocks his head. He asks Paley what colors it will be. Yellow and red, Paley answers, blending into orange and rust below. Peterson says, "It's great, it's going to be great," then he pauses.

"I have a 35 percent feeling that I'm looking at the back. The other side looks more front-y, this looks more back-y," Peterson says.

"This is a gestural piece," Paley explains. "Like with the Statue of Liberty, there's a front and a back."

"Is this the back?" Peterson asks, peering around the model. "If people look at it and they don't get it, they feel stupid," he mutters.

Paley agrees to add some swooping strands of steel to make the back of the sculpture look less like a rear view.

'Stay With What You Know'

National Harbor is the biggest gamble Peterson has taken, but it is hardly the first. When he was 14, his father bought a mango crop and drove the family to Florida to live there while the fruit ripened. At harvest time, young Milt -- not even old enough for a driver's license -- would pick up day laborers in his father's beat-up station wagon and drive them to the orchard.

Sixteen years ago, he bought a shrimp farm in Belize at the suggestion of an enthusiastic friend, ultimately producing 14.8 million pounds of shrimp each year. But he ended up dumping it at a loss two years ago as shrimp prices plummeted under pressure from the cheap, abundant Southeast Asian seafood market.

"The big-picture message from that was like Robert Frost said, the woodcutter cuts wood. Stay with what you know," Peterson says. "But sometimes that can be boring. You need to try different things."

At the end of the day, he has been known to take a front-end loader for a spin around the National Harbor construction site to check on things, maybe move a little dirt. At least twice, he has driven his SUV into the Potomac, engrossed in watching the giant earth-movers, concrete mixers and pile drivers building his project.

"There are people who suffer through making widgets all day and they never find happiness," Peterson says. "Real estate is the greatest thing in the world because you're building something that's going to stay."

He pauses a moment. "I just don't want to screw it up," he says, "because I'm going to have to look at it for the rest of the time I'm here."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.