In South Dallas, City Hall Looks to Undo Decades' Worth of Damage Wrought by City Hall

There used to be apartments here, jammed so close to each other there was almost no daylight between them. Developers built and built till there was no free space left, because the city didn't notice and, really, the city didn't care. There were homes, too, long ago; but they were knocked down by City Hall. Except for the ones that just fell down by themselves.Today and for decades -- decades, and this is no exaggeration -- this area, once a neighborhood until it became what Dallas police called a "war zone" in the early '90s, has looked like pastureland divvied up by concrete and railroad tracks. It's a desolate, verdant sprawl that makes the barren Tenth Street Historic District and the adjacent Bottom neighborhood south of downtown look like thriving metropolises. Its nothingness is staggering. Because this isn't in the middle of nowhere, mind you, but only a few blocks from Fair Park, with downtown's skyline just within reach over treetops. This neighborhood off the avenue once called Grand used to have a name, taken from streets that run through it: Jeffries-Meyers. No one calls it that anymore.Dallas once more eyes this land — and hundreds of other nearby parcels in Bonton and Ideal and Mill City and Dolphin Heights and on and on — for redevelopment, decades after making and breaking promises spit-balled by city officials long since retired or run off. There are vestiges of the old Jeffries-Meyers neighborhood; a few tumbledown apartments remain. But most of its residents now are the homeless who have pitched tents and placed thrown-out recliners and couches beneath shade trees.  Continue reading...