WFAA-TV

Leon Johnson worked hard to clean up the area around his corner grocery store.

DALLAS — If the long-neglected streets of South Dallas face a worthwhile future, efforts are already under way at Leon Johnson's corner store.

“Yeah, I've cleaned it up,” Johnson said. “[But] business is down about 50 percent."

Surprisingly, more than $8,000 in improvements actually drove away customers at his S & S Food Store in the 3700 block of Spring Avenue.

“Yeah, definitely,” he said.

Last March, Johnson got Dallas police to run off the prostitutes and pushers. That’s when business tanked.

Then, to comply with city codes, he closed the kitchen inside his store, got rid of a half dozen slot machines known as “8- liners,” and repainted inside and out.

Barely breaking even now, Johnson is proud of the changes.

WFAA-TV

Leon Johnson has already taken action to clean up his corner store.

"Yeah, I am,” he said. “It didn't dawn on me until after it was cleaned up but hey, we should have done this a long time ago."

Progress is catching up down the street as well.

Two abandoned duplexes, a favorite for drug dealers, will be demolished Friday morning. The duplexes are on First Street at Spring Avenue.

After almost a year of investigations, Dallas Community Prosecutor Maureen Milligan found the absentee owners of the property and convinced them to turn over the deeds to Habitat for Humanity. That non-profit agency will pay for demolition and then build new homes to replace the old ones.

"Police officers aren't going to have to respond here anymore,” Milligan said. “So we have a tremendous savings in terms of dollars. But even a more tremendous success for the fact that we won't have this criminal activity in the neighborhood."

At Dallas City Hall late Thursday, Mayor Tom Leppert announced his Southern Dallas Task Force, a comprehensive plan to revitalize and reinvest south of Interstate 30.

Among his ideas: 143,000 new or remodeled homes in southern Dallas, along with grocery stores and restaurants — investments many parts of North Texas take for granted.

Leppert hopes city and community leaders can identify the challenges over the next two years, then find the best ways to solve them.

"Hopefully, what's going to distinguish this effort from what's done in the past is a thing called action," Leppert told a crowd of almost 200 inside the Dallas City Council chambers.

A few folks like Leon Johnson have already taken action. He now hopes for help to finally fill the gap between rhetoric and reality.

E-mail jwhitely@wfaa.com