For 17 years, the Love Field Antique Mall stood at the corner of Mockingbird Lane and Cedar Springs Road, directly across from the airport, and for 17 years, it was our family's default once-a-month-or-so hangout. My old man went to gawk at the classic cars parked in the hangar-sized garage; the 3-year-old who lives in our house went to find original Star Wars action figures; the missus figured, well, surely we'd find something to fill that empty space. And I loved the whole thing, especially the antique book store in the back corner.

But it's gone now. Gone. Happened on April 15, we were told this morning by the woman who answered the phone there. And it happened just...like...that. The vendors had no warning that the building's owner was selling (the building's on the county books as being worth nearly $2 million). But he did -- to a man named Steve Rogers, who owns the neighboring Holiday Inn Express and Select two doors down from the mall. And what will he do with it? Well, former vendors at the mall have been told he will either turn the building into a convention center of some kind...or a Courtyard by Marriott.

As for the vendors: "They've all scattered," Unfair Park was told this morning. "A third have yet to move out, but they’ve gone all different directions. The cars are gone too. And we didn't know it was coming. It’s money, it’s money, it's money. That’s all I can say." --Robert Wilonsky

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