Like what sinned79 commented. Portrait doesn't works for this photo. Still the subject did not stand out of the crowd. Seat back as far as you can from your photo. Let the photo just occupy 10% of the screen and then you assess if you can make out of the subject. The texture of the building is so reflective that it's taking up all the lights and detail from the surrounding. When you zoom in from this far away, there is no wide perspective to make your focus point in this case, because the colour of the building is cluttered and basically blend in with the backdrop which is a set of cluttered buildings with their own lights. I didn't inspect the EXIF data, but I bet it is a small aperture of f/5.6 and above ? The buildings are the back looks sharp too, which further makes your subject less prominent.
I advice you to trash it so that you can have better portfolio. I do have a lot of such photos too. Nowadays I'm more stringent about my works even though photography is not my main job. In fact, since photography is not my main job, I feel I have the luxury to be even more selective when comes to showing people my works. It's really up to you, I still keep those photos, just that I don't show them because it doesn't pass my own judgement. I understand you have spend a lot of effort walking around, getting good perspective and sweating with the tripod. When you are at the scene, you might feel it's alright, but the outcome doesn't seems to be the same because of the nature of the sensor where dynamic range is not sufficient, it just didn't work out correct in the picture and other reasons. Result - Trash it.
If you feel you would like to redo one more time, the following is what I advice that you can give it a trial. No guarantee that it will work out nice, since trial and error is what I do most of the time too.
1) Try the Brenizer method that someone has tried for his/her portrait shoots recently found in
http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/threads/973630-Mid-Autumn . Details can be found at
http://blog.buiphotography.com/2009/07/the-brenizer-method-explained-with-directions/. It will require you to stitch, but you can use this method to make your backdrop less cluttered by making them OOF. I'm not sure how nice it will look for sceneries and buildings, but no harm giving it a trial. For the water, use a long exposure to totally blur out the water. After that blend them together using masking in PP. Vignetting effect will also bring the focus to the building u wanted.
2) Try another angle and perspective. Building looks more majestic when bottom up, even my office building that sucks from normal perspective looks better when you feel as such
6132671640_55322aa109.jpg.
3) Try HDR, there are a lot of lights. There are details in them that can be retrieved using a shorter exposure. That's where HDR comes in useful. The star burst/flare is nice, so stop down your aperture (good if your lens aperture uses 9 blades) when doing it.
4) Do a sunrise shot, it doesn't have to be sunset or night time for a shot to be nice and as photographers, we can choose to manipulate shots or go with the nature flows. If the setting looks better in the morning, so be it and make the best out of it. Things looks better if you don't bend the lights.
Play with different combination mentioned above. Be flexible, be creative. You may take a look at the works of this photographer.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielcheong/. I personally feel he is a master of PP and HDRI. He works has been very stunning in architecture and landscapes.
Not so sure if cropping would create less confusion for the composition, maybe you could advice on this?