Seritage tenants are breaking leases left and right, and potential buyers have all backed off too. The company has cut CAPEX to the bone and is in survival mode. It is Chicxulub meteor hit the Earth f—ed. No one wants the Sears and Kmart spaces now, taking out a major incentive to close the stores. There is also incentive and desire to get full retail price on inventory without liquidators getting their cut. Seritage was a terrible mall partner, leaving good spaces unfilled for months and years because of unrealistic expectations on pricing necessary to meet their debt. Price per square foot for mall properties in some places went UP when Sears left leaving just empty boxes, because Sears is a blight on value.
The rock and the hard place is that there's no cash or vendor relationships to build the stores back up to any kind of reasonable state. The borrowing well has run dry, while ESL and TransformCo have nothing left to sell or use as leverage. Don't be surprised at bankruptcy, or a near equivalent restructuring and fire sale controlled by Warren Buffet. Seritage exists at Berkshire's sufferance, because they don't want to own these miserable properties themselves. He's a lot harder to fool than the s—ers Lampert has been conning up until now.
Perhaps the Kmart cheerleader has become desperate to push the narrative because it is the only way forward with much more consumer interest and mindshare and more easily accessible vendors. There is no way out for the Sears ecosystem at all.