Retail · Backfill demand
Big Lots Sold 460 Leases to a Liquidator. Then Half the Stores Reopened
The Big Lots wind-down produced an unusual outcome: a liquidator bought the leases, and a regional operator reopened hundreds of them.
Big Lots filed Chapter 11 in September 2024 and sold the leases to more than 460 stores to Gordon Brothers Retail Partners late that year. What happened next was not a normal liquidation.
Variety Wholesalers acquired more than 200 of those locations as part of the deal and began reopening them under the Big Lots banner in April 2025, nine stores on 10 April, a second wave on 1 May, and roughly seventy more on 15 May. Tractor Supply, Ollie's Bargain Outlet and Burlington took leases too. Aldi later bought a handful across three states.
What this tells you about the boxes
Big Lots occupied roughly 25,000 to 35,000 square feet in neighborhood and community centers, larger than a Joann, smaller than a former grocery. The reopening tells you the sites themselves were fine; the operator was the problem. That distinction matters enormously if you own one.
It also produced a useful data point for anyone underwriting a vacancy: the same real estate can support a viable retailer at the same rent, which means the right question is not "is this box obsolete" but "was this tenant's business model obsolete."
The counterweight
Do not read the backfill headlines as evidence that anchor space clears quickly everywhere. CBRE data out of Georgia showed the supply of available anchor boxes, 20,000 square feet and up, jumping 57 percent between 2023 and 2024, from 4.3 to 6.8 million square feet. More telling, the time to backfill an anchor space rose from 21 months to 25, a 19 percent increase, with asking rents softening as a result.
Twenty-five months of downtime is a different deal from nine. If you are underwriting an anchor vacancy in a market with competing empty boxes, use the local number, not the national narrative.
What to do with it
Model downtime by suite size rather than as one figure. In-line space and a junior anchor do not re-let on the same timeline, and treating them identically is the most common way a strip center model flatters itself.
Split it properly: Strip Plaza underwriting takes separate downtime assumptions for in-line and junior anchor space.
Related notes
How to read this. These are working notes. Figures come from public reporting and from the models on this site, and market conditions change, check anything time-sensitive against the source before you rely on it. Nothing here is investment, tax or legal advice, and no note is a substitute for diligence on a specific property.
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