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One of our stops on Oscar night led to this revelation: “The recovery is here, it will be steady and long.” That’s what Marty Collins, co-owner of the new W Hotel ran by us at the E! party red carpet, the first glitzy event to roll into his new joint. Collins, CEO of Gate House Capital, is confident his venture’s generation of 500 jobs has been the tipping point. We ain’t holding our breath. But what the Legman can say is this is the only building in LA that can be improved by controversial supergraphics. The past few years our daily routine had us taking in the ballet in steel that was the process of erecting The W complex. And the end result? The completed project is a randomly polychromed architectural pastiche, clashing with the stately pre-war loft buildings at Hollywood and Vine, evoking nothing but a bucket of Lego’s overturned on the living room floor that was then slapped together by special needs children. Now with everyone beat, It remains to be seen who will be heading to Drai’s -the Vegas scaled mega night club in the hotel (other than celebs drinking on the arm) and who will buy up the residences at the W. “That’s the final piece in the puzzle, we begin leasing next month” Collins noted. Now we’re radically skeptical and will keep tabs on the venture. Not from Drai’s-but rather from our perch over a three dollar draft across the street at The Frolic Room.

Raimund Abraham 1933-2010

It will be unnerving hopping on our next bus since architect Raimund Abraham was killed in Downtown LA Wednesday night. His car collided with a Metro bus at 5th and Main after lecturing at the Southern California Institute for Architecture. We once had a college room mate totally enamored with the easily quotable visionary-“Pratt (Institute) is BULLSHIT” was a favorite- who appeared to have walked out of a Werner Herzog film; the Austrian emigrehad not actually built a building until he was nearly 70 years old when he completed the 25 foot-wide Austrian Cultural Forum on East 52nd Street in 2002. There will be a tribute to the architect in NYC on 24 March.

Legman was warmly welcomed to the LAPD’s spanking new 437 million dollar headquarters the other day. Three floors up the brilliantly reflective façade of the L-shaped building a law enforcement management type is waiving at us!

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