What is lost when a popular flea market closes?

MIAMI (AP) — This is the best time for Claribel Vasquez’s little juice stand at the Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market. Children on summer vacation, thirsty from scampering around the teeming open-air market, buy creamy coconut smoothies, sugar cane juice splashed with kiwi and pineapple drinks infused with ginger.

In many ways, these kids are following in her footsteps — the same path walked by generations of immigrant families in South Florida.

When Vasquez arrived as a teen to Miami from the Dominican Republic in 1987, she strolled the sprawling booths every Sunday with her aunt, buying vegetables, browsing shoes and snacking on roasted corn. She’d repeat the weekly ritual of visits with her own daughters, and then their children, and eventually would open her own small business at the flea market.

“I didn’t know what a mall was,” said Vasquez, 51. “This was our mall.”

After nearly four decades in operation, the Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market is slated to shut down on Sept. 30. Its New York-based owners have decided to capitalize on its increasingly valuable 43 acres of real estate wedged between Hialeah, Miami Lakes and Miami Gardens in northwestern Miami-Dade County.

Some vendors may relocate to a smaller indoor space at a nearby clothing wholesaler, Atlantic Hosiery, but the closure of this massive and massively popular site has angered many of the market’s mom-and-pop business owners and is another sign of the social and economic changes wrought by a wave of redevelopment and gentrification across South Florida.

With the demise of flea markets that once dotted South Florida, the informal economy that once helped support underserved communities shrinks. For many struggling, cash-strapped newcomers from Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, renting a...