One of the details in the article suggests that the company incurred a lot of debt to acquire a major competitor. Closing down the business so quickly suggests to me that the company has a liquidation value of less than $0.
It is the third owner of a motel who finally makes a little money.
The assets don’t go away, but they may be worthless to the current owner. If you have $10 million in assets, $50 million in debt, and no way to pay off the debt through your current operations, you may as well walk away because your creditors will be fighting for those assets and you will own none of them anyway.