On September 9, 2024, Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, citing inflation and high interest rates. The retailer agreed to sell substantially all of its stores and operations to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management for $620 million, with $707.5 million in DIP financing committed.
The filing stranded Big Lots's entire distribution-center footprint — four 1.3-million-square-foot warehouses in Columbus OH, Montgomery AL, Tremont PA, and Durant OK — which Big Lots did not own. It held them as tenant under long-term net leases from Blue Owl Real Estate Net Lease Property Fund, which had acquired them from Oak Street Real Estate Capital in 2021. When Big Lots closed the Tremont and Durant centers in December 2024, Blue Owl was left holding two vacant 1.3-million-square-foot warehouses with no tenants and no income — in the same private credit firm that would cap retail-fund redemptions 16 months later amid a securities fraud class action.
The Tremont warehouse was sold to DHS on January 29, 2026 for $119.5 million, exactly double Schuylkill County's fresh full-market-value assessment. The Durant warehouse was purchased by the Choctaw Nation in March 2026 after ICE moved to acquire it. This bankruptcy is the trigger event that converted a rent-yielding Blue Owl net-lease asset into the stranded asset that WEXMAC-TITUS later rescued.