Kilroy Lawsuit Claims NeueHouse Owes $5M In Back Rent In Hollywood

Hollywood landlord Kilroy Realty Corp. and bankrupt private club NeueHouse are mired in a battle over $5M in back rent, a process that is complicated by NeueHouse’s ongoing Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. 

A pair of June hearings are scheduled in unlawful detainer and breach of contract cases filed by Kilroy. 

At issue are months of unpaid rent at NeueHouse’s roughly 90K SF Hollywood location in Kilroy’s Columbia Square development dating to September 2024. That’s when, Kilroy alleges, NeueHouse stopped paying rent for the space it leased on Sunset Boulevard, according to a 322-page complaint Kilroy filed six months later in March 2025.  

At that point, Kilroy claimed it was owed more than $2M in back rent and noted that NeueHouse would owe $592K for each month after March 2025 that rent debt continued to accrue.

In June 2025, attorneys for NeueHouse responded to Kilroy’s complaint, stating that the coworking club denied “each and every allegation” made by Kilroy including the amount of back rent owed, if any. Representatives for Kilroy and NeueHouse did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

By the time Kilroy sent NeueHouse a notice of default in August, the back rent had ballooned to more than $5M in rent, the landlord alleges. Later that month, on Aug. 20, 2025, Kilroy served NeueHouse with a three-day notice to pay rent or quit. 

The notice was sent via email “to avoid disruption at the premises,” according to a court filing. 

On Aug. 29, 2025, Kilroy filed an unlawful detainer notice to evict NeueHouse. A week later, on Sept. 5, all three NeueHouse locations — in Hollywood, Venice and Manhattan — abruptly closed, and the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The June hearings for both of Kilroy’s lawsuits are unlikely to offer much forward movement on the case, the progress of which will be steered by the ongoing bankruptcy process. 

Landlords seeking damages for back rent have some hurdles to clear before they can recoup their losses, said Jonathan Shenson, a partner at Greenberg Glusker in the bankruptcy group.  

If a lease is written with rental rates at or above market rent, what commonly happens is a bankruptcy trustee will reject that lease, which happened in the case of the lease NeueHouse signed with Kilroy, shortly after the company filed for bankruptcy. That move effectively stops the clock on additional rent accruing and puts in place certain caps on how much a landlord can get back. The formula basically caps shorter-term lease damages at one year’s worth of rent and longer-term leases at a maximum of three years’ worth of rent, or 15% of what would be owed for the remaining lease term, Shenson said.  

NeueHouse’s 15-year lease at Columbia Square began in 2014. The total rent around the time NeueHouse allegedly began skipping rent payments was approximately $4.3M a year, according to the rent schedule in court filings, though it was scheduled to increase annually throughout the duration of the lease. 

Landlords’ claims are generally treated like those of any other unsecured creditor, meaning that in cases where there are secured creditors, such as lenders, landlords’ claims take a backseat. 

“Whether there's money to pay those claims is, more often than not, a function of how much money is in the bankruptcy estate,” Shenson said. That remains to be seen as the process plays out.  

NeueHouse isn’t totally gone. Convene Hospitality Group acquired the NeueHouse brand in January through a court-approved agreement that also gave it ownership of the former Madison Square location in New York City. CHG did not plan to reopen NeueHouse’s Los Angeles locations.