Seritage was spun off from the department store chain as a real estate invetment trust in 2015, with a portfolio of roughly 250 Sears locations and the power to terminate leases and take those stores back. "We set that up so Seritage had the right to redevelop those properties," Lampert said when asked about the REIT at the recent shareholder meeting. "What [those stores] can become has a lot of potential ... like residential ... but it requires a lot of capital we didn't have."