Communal office space firm rents CBS building in Hollywood

The historic CBS broadcasting facility in Hollywood where George Burns and Gracie Allen once did shtick on the radio will soon be repopulated with entrepreneurs starting new creative businesses.

Developers of a $390-million residential, office and retail complex under construction on Sunset Boulevard called Columbia Square have agreed to rent the existing former CBS building on the site to NeueHouse, a New York operator of avant garde communal office space.

NeueHouse, as conceived by New York venture capitalists Joshua Abram and Alan Murray, intends to take the incubator-office concept a step further by designing an environment where strangers can work independently or come together serendipitously.

Abram and Murray, veteran tech entrepreneurs, envision creating a series of spaces and amenities that cater to individual entrepreneurs and teams of as many as 20 people in the creative arts such as film, design, publishing, the performing arts and technology.

"What we are doing is fairly radical," Abram said. "We are trying to truly reinvent how talented people in global creative industries work together."

The first NeueHouse opened last year in a century-old building across the street from the Park Avenue Armory in New York's Upper East Side. The industrial-chic interior was designed by architect David Rockwell, who is now working on a plan for the old CBS property.

Rockwell is kicking around design possibilities with noted Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, the designer of Walt Disney Concert Hall, Abram said.

"David has been collaborating on some ideas with Gehry's office," Abram said.

The name NeueHouse is a joining of the German word for new and house and is pronounced "noy-house." Those who want to use the space become members, similar to joining a health club.

Among the charter members of the New York NeueHouse were English music producer Chris Blackwell of Island Records and Jefferson Hack, founder of the British fashion and culture magazine Dazed & Confused.

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Communal office space firm rents CBS building in Hollywood