aemeijers wrote:

They missed a bet with the merger, IMHO- rather than close or sell off
the stand-alone or stripmall Kmarts, they should have walked away from
the expen$ive enclosed-mall rents where Sears is, and made the Kmarts
into old-style Sears stores like in the 1960s and 70s.

In almost every case, department stores at malls are not paying rent.
They built, and own their buildings, and often the parking lots closest
to their stores. It actually is a big pain in the butt for mall owners,
because the department stores have veto power over new construction at
the mall that might have an impact on the department stores, even when
the impact is minimal. We're going through that at the mall near me,
where there are actually four different owners, Sears, JC Penney,
Federated, and Evershine (mall owner), and everything the mall owner
wants to do is subject to approval by the department store owners.

The department stores really can't do anything else with their mall
stores except to continue to operate them, or try to sell them to
another departments store chain. The zoning is such that they can't just
run out and tear down the store and build condos.