The La Bajada and Los Altos pockets of West Dallas. Wynnewood Village, bordered by a rainbow of diversity that is indicative of Oak Cliff. Fair Park and the adjoining MLK neighborhood. The Lake June area of Pleasant Grove, where DART's Green Line will head in 2010. The potentially powerful economic engine that is the Executive Airport-Southwest Center Mall-hospital district triangle at Dallas' southernmost edge.

The "Bridging Dallas' North-South Gap" team has selected these neighborhoods as our five bases from which to being our "surge for Southern Dallas."

In addition to all the learning we've been doing since October (for more details, see About This Project), our team has written more than 20 editorials, two Points cover packages and three Points of Contact along with publishing about the same number of Viewpoints columns, most of them by first-time writers.

 We've also created an interactive southern Dallas page on dallasnews.com, allowing readers to respond to our work and report problems in their own neighborhoods. We've formally interviewed more than 100 "thought leaders" and stakeholders, as well as talking with scores of people we met in our first town hall, five tours and several southern Dallas-related conferences.

We're aiming our formal project kickoff for mid-summer – or sooner. Each of the five writers on the "gap" team has spent four full days or so in his or her base, getting to know people, hearing their ideas and trying to figure out the best way the Editorial Board can advocate to help their particular neighborhood.

Here are some of their thoughts about what they have learned so far:

• Jim Mitchell writes: "I don't think I realized just how much the Trinity Project will shape the future of the La Bajada and Los Altos neighborhoods. The new Trinity bridges will open up these neighborhoods, whose residents are mostly low-income and Hispanic, to commercial and housing investments. That said, project-related land speculation and redevelopment will price residents out of these neighborhoods."

Jim notes that much of his challenge will be in advocating for the best possible balance between preserving a stable neighborhood while harnessing some of the Downtown/Uptown energy and momentum that will jump across the river bottom.

• Colleen McCain Nelson writes: "As I drive the streets of Pleasant Grove and surrounding neighborhoods, I'm amazed to find sizeable ranches and wide-open spaces within the city limits. Some of the landscapes are gorgeous. But urban decay is prevalent as well. Within a few blocks, you can find a glut of used-car lots and tire shops, as well as pastures populated with grazing goats. That's a zoning/development challenge like no other I've encountered."

The potential of transit-related development around the Lake June stop on the DART Green Line, to be completed in 2010, could make this area a prime relocation spot for those weary of long commutes.

• Mike Hashimoto writes: "Since I grew up not far from my base – roughly bounded by Ledbetter Drive on the north, Westmoreland Road on the west, Wheatland Road to the south and Hampton Road to the east – I can't say too much has surprised me, but it has been interesting to learn more about what I thought I knew.

"The word that keeps coming back to me is ‘potential.' In this base, it's great. The sheer amount of developable land is immense, and the possibility of a three-pronged economic driver – Dallas Executive Airport, the Southwest Center Mall and surrounding property and the Charlton Methodist Hospital district along Wheatland – is exciting.

Of course, this will require two things: forward thinking and a plan."

• Tod Robberson writes: "What has surprised me the most about Fair Park is that community leaders seem to have set their sights low about what kinds of investment and development they can attract. Their area could soon turn into one of the city's hottest development venues, now that two DART stations are soon to open. Already, big investment dollars are coming in."

Tod says the opportunity exists to "envision something that emphasizes the uniqueness of the neighborhood – not stores that would make Fair Park look like every other place in America."

• Oak Cliff resident William McKenzie, who is researching a base around Wynnewood Village, writes: "What has impressed me the most about my base is how much this district represents the challenge of Texas itself. Here you have a district where middle- to upper-middle-income, mostly Anglo folks live in close proximity to poor, working, mostly Latino families. The challenge is how you keep them together, instead of letting the area become all poor or all well-heeled."

Bill believes that part of the answer rests in building up the two main shopping corridors, Jefferson Boulevard and Wynnewood Village, so they serve the community's needs.

I'm guessing that, like our writers, many of you have already encountered a few surprises in this column. For too long, the Dallas south of Interstate 30 or the Trinity River has largely been invisible to the rest of the city and the North Texas region. We are out to change that, starting with a detailed introduction of these five bases in late June or July. Then, we will consistently update, through editorials, what each neighborhood needs and how the measurements we have devised to monitor success are changing (in the right direction, we hope!).

Our overall goal is to make southern Dallas as a whole a more desirable place to live and work, so the key is growing success in concentric circles from the five bases.

We're also researching the best type of public-private venture that will handle the vast amount of money all of our fixes will require. And we plan to monitor leaders at the city, county, state and federal levels, plus DISD, for a "Bridging the Gap" scoreboard. And following the model launched in December and updated in March, we will continue to publish "10 Drops in the Bucket" to point out specific – and easy-to-fix – problems throughout southern Dallas.

We continue to visit with experts, stakeholders and residents of southern Dallas most every day. Some of them are listed below. But we will never know enough so if you want to offer an opinion, suggestion or problem in your neighborhood that needs fixing, e-mail us at southerndallas@dallasnews.com.

Sharon Grigsby is Deputy Editorial Page Editor at The Dallas Morning News. Her e-mail address is sgrigsby@dallasnews.com.

We've been trying to learn all we can about southern Dallas since beginning our work last fall. Those whom we've met with or whose neighborhood seminars we've attended include:

Mayor Tom Leppert

City Council members Elba Garcia, Dwaine Caraway, Pauline Medrano, Tennell Atkins, Dave Neumann, Carolyn Davis, Vonciel Jones Hill.

Darwin Bruce, Potter's House

Antonio DiMambro, urban planner

Theresa O'Donnell, city of Dallas economic development

Gerald Britt, Central Dallas Ministries

Michael Davis, city Plan Commission

Jon Edmonds, Frazier Revitalization Inc.

Jerome Garza, Dallas school board

Hank Lawson, Fair Park community leader

Tim Bray, The Williams Institute

James Washington, Dallas Weekly publisher

Bob Stimson, Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce

DHA president and board members Ann Lott, Betty Culbreath and Thomas Karol

Casey Thomas, Dallas NAACP

Terrance Maiden, senior real estate developer

Alan Shor, developer

Frank Mihalopoulos, developer

Rich Hollander, analytics for commercial site-selections

Daniel Oney, city of Dallas economic development

City Manager Mary Suhm

DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa

Kim Olson, DISD chief human development officer

Former Mayor Ron Kirk

Michael Sorrell, Paul Quinn College president

Shawn Williams, Dallas South blog publisher

Joseph Hernandez, North Oak Cliff council candidate

State Sen. Royce West

The Rev. Frederick Haynes, Friendship-West Baptist pastor

Forest Turner, city of Dallas code compliance

Kirby Warnock, writer and Oak Cliff resident

Rickie Rush, Inspiring Body of Christ pastor

Pastor Richie Butler, Union Cathedral

Pastors Joe Zinser, Beatriz Pacheco, and Jackie Wickware, Pleasant Mound Methodist Church in Pleasant Grove

Marcia Page, Foundation for Community Empowerment

Arcilia Acosta, co-chair of Dallas Achieves and chairwoman of the Texas Association of Mexican-American Chambers of Commerce

Anna Hill, Dolphin Heights Neighborhood Association president

Janet Morrison, Sylvia Baylor and Wyshina Harris, Central Dallas Ministries/Turner Courts

Fernando Rubio, Austin College student and West Dallas resident

Jerry Killingsworth and Karl Zavitkovsky, city of Dallas economic development

Rawly Sanchez, Adamson High School principal

Martha Willard, James Madison High School principal

Dorothy Gomez, Greiner Middle School principal

Tony Tobar, Sunset High School principal

Omar Jahwar and Antong Lucky of Operation Rejuvenation

Calvin Stephens, consultant working with city to promote minority contracts

Arrick Jackson, University of North Texas criminal justice professor

Marc Levin, Texas Public Policy Foundation

Paul Tracy, University of Texas at Dallas sociologist

Levi Williams, Dallas Police Department

Roxann Pais, Dallas assistant city attorney

Magnus Lofstrom, UT-Dallas economics professor

Terri Walker, Region 10 Education Service Center

Jesse Gonzalez, Destination Graduation

Marcus Martin, Education is Freedom local CEO

Wenhua Di, Federal Reserve of Dallas

Paul Jargowsky, UT-Dallas public policy professor

Norman Henry, Builders of Hope CDC, West Dallas

John Greenan, Central Dallas Community Development Corp.

Riccardo Bodini, RW Ventures

Nathan Berg, UT-Dallas economics professor

Randy Rough, Endeavour Development, Milwaukee

Joseph Fackel, Buxton Corp.

Additionally, we've received about 100 suggestions as the result of a December column about the project and the "10 drops" packages.