Macy's still plans to close 100 stores early next year. Its properties could soon be for sale.

PHILADELPHIA — Empty nesters often downsize into space better suited to their new needs.

So do ailing department stores that sit empty due to new competition and the rise of digital shopping.

Last month, Macy’s announced it was forming a strategic alliance with Brookfield Asset Management to increase the value of its real estate portfolio. That portfolio is getting trimmed as falling traffic means fewer bricks-and-mortar stores.

Macy’s — like Sears — is suddenly taking on more the role of landlord than department store. Both are looking to profit by inviting other retailers — and even new-concept department stores — into their old spaces.

“It’s part of a long-term shift as the department store struggles to be more relevant,” said Eric Rothman, portfolio manager at CenterSquare Investment Management in suburban Philadelphia. “They need to close stores in unprofitable locations, and a big part of their value is the real estate. They can sell, re-lease or reinvigorate these properties to free up capital” with the aid of real estate firms.

Soon after Christmas, the parent of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s is expected to identify the 100 Macy’s stores that will close in early 2017 — on top of 38 that closed earlier this year.

Macy’s knows that much of its inventory sits on prime real estate and that it has to better manage its remaining stores.

Enter Brookfield, which has experience in managing assets in retail, office, multifamily, industrial and hospitality.

Under the partnership, Brookfield has exclusive rights for up to 24 months to create a “predevelopment plan” for each of about 50 Macy’s stores. The retailer can add stores and land to the deal.

Partnering with Brookfield “is the best way to unlock the potential of those assets,” said Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s Inc. chairman and CEO.

Jeff Green, who consults retailers on long-term strategy, said: “Macy’s has begun to realize that, like Sears, the value of their company is in their owned real estate.” So Macy’s needs to “unlock” some value “by either subleasing portions of their store, or, more likely, selling the box and dirt it sits on to real estate investors.”

This raises two key questions, Green said: Is Macy’s still a retail company? And what will be the ultimate size and use of its “box”?

He said executives could shrink traditional Macy’s selling spaces, or chunk them off and open its off-price Backstage format somewhere in the four-wall box.

In 2012, PREIT CEO Joseph Coradino said that he expects PREIT to get back up to five Macy’s stores from throughout its portfolio among the 100 anticipated to close nationally, and that demand for their spaces was “robust.”