Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.
Because the company then had to pay off those extreme loans, they were forced to sell off their assets and property, which they leased back from the very private equity firms that now owned them.
The same thing happened more recently with Red Lobster and JoAnn Fabrics.
It’s interesting because almost every single one of the Kmarts in my area disappeared right about the same time, and it was about the same time they started building a lot of luxury condos. Once companies realized that they would make a lot more money off of the luxury condo build and those areas were zoned for both residential and commercial they went ahead and acquired the lots tore down the buildings and now almost every single one of them is a luxury condo. There’s only one exception and I think it’s because the state had to take control of it because they rebuilt the highway that was right next to it and increase the off-ramp and on-ramp area and rebuild the road to basically cut across where the parking lot used to be.