I've never stalked a building before... I went out over 5 nights looking for the best angles and hoping for the smoke (steam?) to be blowing in the most photogenic direction. Finally got this on the fifth night. If I knew about this location 2 nights earlier, the smoke would have been blowing overhead which would have been cool! But it was -15F outside and I couldn't feel my toes. Did a slight rotation to make front corner of building straight up and down, slight crop to get rid of out-of-image canvas areas caused by rotation, very subtle levels and curves adjustment, resized and sharpened. This is damn near the out of camera crop! You can get a sense of scale by looking at the pickup truck at the bottom of the image.
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This is a nice pic. It's really smooth compared to a lot of the other shots in this challenge, and it's sharp as well. I think it would have done better if the actual sky was in fact darker. The colour of the sky at the moment is quite light, and similar to the building. I think a shorter shutter time would make it darker, and then the building would stand out more against it and have more impact. It would also stop the lights looking so blown out. Now, I wasn't there when you shot this so you might have tried that already and decided it wasn't as good, but I think having the sky darker to make the factory 'pop' more would look better.
The composition is pretty much centered. I don't know what was on either side of the building, but I would have liked to see the building more towards the right of the frame. I think this would look better because the smoke has more space to blow into, and it could possible enhance the sense of scale by having more space around it.
Overall a very nice pic, and it sounds like you went through a lot of pain to get it :P
Very interesting and effective shot. The smoke stacks are very nice. It gets a little busy below; have you experimented with cropping the bottom part out? Nice lighting and interesting colors.
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