A friend of mine (with his own side business doing CCTV installs for a few clients) looked at buying the cameras out of a couple local stores when they closed down. I looked through the stock lists they gave him and there was nothing really spectacular, at least nothing suitable for our needs at the price point they wanted, even if they were going for thirty cents on the dollar. I talked to my boss about going in on it, but he wasn't interested in a bunch of used cameras, despite the fact there was still factory warranty on them (and yet, we continued to recycle ancient used IQ and Arecont cameras... gah).
It would have cost him something like $15k per store up front and he could have only use a few himself; without a guaranteed resale of the rest, he opted against it.
As far as Target Canada's demise, I wouldn't say so much that the Zellers stores were in bad locations, as most were anchor retailers in major malls. Zellers was once a very popular low-cost retailer, similar to Wal-Mart, but once Wal-Mart came to Canada, their popularity started to fall, aided by the fact their products and prices didn't really keep up and over time the stores started to look dingy and dated.
When Target announced they were coming to Canada, shoppers got excited, expecting the same kind of products and pricing they'd get by crossing the border to the US stores. Unfortunately, Target Canada ended being little more than dressed-up Zellers stores (they were VERY nice stores, mind you, very clean and bright and well-organized), with little improvement in variety or prices. The prices were MOSTLY in line with Wal-Mart, and they definitely had a larger presence (ie. more convenient locations), but the product fell short in both selection and quality.
Realistically, the biggest problem was that customers felt let down. Wal-Mart customers didn't need to cross the border for their US stores because the Canadian stores offered good alternative. Target didn't. People expected a lot from them, and they didn't deliver. Even after Target Canada admitted where they'd gone wrong and tried to fix it, customers didn't come back. That's what ultimately killed them.