urbanMSP

A below market lease is (at least potentially, depending on the lease terms) an asset that could be sold as part of a liquidation.

I suppose, although a commercial lease would typically require consent of the landlord to assign. I don't know whether bankruptcy changes that but I wouldn't think so. Then again, a lease would also typically say that a bankruptcy is an event of default that may give the landlord termination rights. Depends on the lease.

And isn't the lease currently owned by not K-mart? Lampert has already sucked the lease deal into his hedge fund? Or he just owns the debt and would get a first shot at the lease deal in a liquidation?

Seritage is mostly interested in wholly owned properties, Lampert has transferred Sears/Kmart land to Seritage and rents it back to profitable Sears/Kmarts, and redevelops the rest. If they had owned both the lease and the land for Kmart, that would be different. But because the land was always held by a third party, that kept it from getting sucked up and developed by Seritage instead. Sears continues to own the lease, and the only question mark is whether the terms of that lease allow it to be sold as an asset in liquidation.

Seritage does entirely own the St. Paul store and will likely drive development on the property themselves, for what it's worth.

This fing Kmart has led me to know more about Lampert and Seritage than I ever wanted to know.

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/12/mi ... eet-kmart/

Interesting article! I wonder what the sale price will be...

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/12/mi ... eet-kmart/

Interesting article! I wonder what the sale price will be...

Ahh stupid locked articles. What does this mean? Can the city form an LLC and buy it and tear it down? Is this good news at all?

Sears Holdings is likely to go into Chapter 7 tomorrow which will result in mass liquidation. So we may get a resolution on what will, if anything, replace not just the KMart here, but also the one in St. Paul as well.

Looks like Sears is liquidating. Grab the popcorn: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consum ... d_nn_tw_ma

I submitted a FOIA request to the city to read the lease. Is there someone interested in reading them that's fluent in the legalese? I attempted to decipher them but got a bit buried in the bureaucracy.

I submitted a FOIA request to the city to read the lease. Is there someone interested in reading them that's fluent in the legalese? I attempted to decipher them but got a bit buried in the bureaucracy.

Glad someone finally did that! I would love to read the lease.

I submitted a FOIA request to the city to read the lease. Is there someone interested in reading them that's fluent in the legalese? I attempted to decipher them but got a bit buried in the bureaucracy.

If you share the lease, I can take a look.

So, short take away: these are only some of the relevant documents and they do not answer all of our questions.

Slightly longer take away: there's an entity between Kmart and the landlord of ground lease, meaning Kmart's bankruptcy may not be an event of default on the key document.

Brief summary of the documents the city provided:

As of 11/15/17, the city is the landlord on the ground lease, having taken assignment from the original landowner. The tenant on that lease is Troy Coolidge No. 42 LLC. The initial term of that lease expired on 2/23/03, but tenant has the right to renew for 10 successive 5 year periods. At the time of the assignment, the original landlord specified that the term had been extended to 2/23/18. Presumably it's been extended again. Tenant filing for bankruptcy is an event of default that allows landlord to terminate the lease with 60 days notice. But note that Kmart is not the tenant.

There are references to the sublease between Troy Coolidge No. 42 LLC and Kmart (and various amendments and assignments), but those documents were not provided.

Most of what I just said was actually reported here: http://www.southwestjournal.com/news/20 ... mart-land/

Except maybe Troy Coolidge No. 42 LLC (the name is apparently a reference to the address of the original Sears HQ: https://www.consumerreports.org/consume ... re-street/) is related to Sears?

Troy Coolidge No. 13, LLC is one of the bankruptcy debtors, but not the relevant entity, apparently: https://restructuring.primeclerk.com/sears/

Disclaimer: This discussion is for public discourse purposes, does not create an attorney-client relationship and I do not represent anyone reading this, street.mn forum or anyone else.

Just to add here, Michigan has good detail on Troy Coolidge No. 42 LLC. Their latest filing for a Foreign LLC Annual Statement was signed by LAWRENCE J MEERSCHAERT. If you look into that name, he is listed as an officer on SEARS,ROEBUCK AND CO's foreign corporation filing in Nevada. Both of those company filings list CT CORPORATION SYSTEM as their registered agent, which is a division of Wolters Kluwer that handle business filings for foreign entities.

In short: This parcel is tied up in a series of holding companies that lead to one or possibly more off shore foreign entities.



What is interesting to me is why Lampert keeps sinking money in when he presumably knows Sears' value is held in these property leases by a foreign off shore entity, and most likely would not be impacted by a bankruptcy filing.

My dream list for redevelopment on this site, not a comprehensive list:
1. A transit/bike/walk mall between Greenway and Lake. Many of us have been calling for this for years, but I've never seen an official indication this is being considered. And officials always talk about "reopening Nicollet to traffic" which sounds like a mixed bag.
2. Space/consideration for transit guideway connectivity between the Midtown Greenway and Nicollet Ave ROW.

1 is already happening, as part of the 35W rebuild, albeit a little bit to the east of here http://www.minneapolismn.gov/dca/WCMSP-200223

No, I mean *Nicollet* should be a transit/bike/walk street on this block when Kmart goes away, rather than reopening it to all traffic.

See as it looks today Sears is making it out of bankruptcy, they said they plan to keep as many sears and Kmart stores open as possible. looks like this might be even a little longer before anything happens.

On the bright side many radioshack and others prove getting out of bankruptcy once doesnt mean it last forever

Finally someone has made a map of the remaining Sears and Kmart locations nationwide through their latest announced closures.

Sears/Kmart has mostly gone extinct in the midwest, and if Madison's Sears and/or Minot/Michgan's remaining Kmart go, how long could the distribution math make sense for Nicollet Kmart?

Well, Kmart is about to close their distribution center south of Chicago, but they still have one near KC. As long as that one is open, it can supply a pretty wide-ranging area. I suppose they could also try co-locating a Kmart DC with a Sears DC if they had to.

Finally someone has made a map of the remaining Sears and Kmart locations nationwide through their latest announced closures.

Sears/Kmart has mostly gone extinct in the midwest, and if Madison's Sears and/or Minot/Michgan's remaining Kmart go, how long could the distribution math make sense for Nicollet Kmart?

It won't be a Kmart that much longer. I give it 2-3 years. Eddie is still doing what he's been doing for years: a slow, deliberate liquidation of the most valuable assets. There's no actual business plan to improve Kmart or Sears. Sales will continue to decline and expenses will rise. They can barely manage cash flow as it is now, and once they've sold off what they can, everything will come to an end. But I guess not for Eddie; he'll be richer than ever. The biggest issue is what happens during the end times - they will probably try to sell/assign the lease. And who knows what that'll look like. Hopefully the City will be in a position to buy the lease outright.

Minneapolis is also in a good position with complete ownership of the entire property. Eddie knows his real estate holdings are worth more than the stores themselves (see Rice Street Sears) and this allows the city to ultimately control the destiny of the property instead of Seritage, no matter how long it takes.

Minneapolis is also in a good position with complete ownership of the entire property. Eddie knows his real estate holdings are worth more than the stores themselves (see Rice Street Sears) and this allows the city to ultimately control the destiny of the property instead of Seritage, no matter how long it takes.

This is the point I think gets missed when talking about the decades left on the lease. You can lease the land, but good luck finding a tenant comfortable with the decrepit building exactly as is, because zero changes to that property will be approved.