The Southside/Rolling Hills steering committee has defined the project area as Fayetteville Street west to the American Tobacco Trail and from Hillside and Lakewood avenues south to Linwood Avenue.

In that area are Rolling Hills, the old Whitted Junior High building (the original Hillside High School) and much of the Southside neighborhood.

Southside, also known as St. Theresa, lies across South Roxboro Street from Rolling Hills and runs west to the American Tobacco Trail. From Lakewood Avenue, it reaches south to C.C. Spaulding School.

"We want Rolling Hills to mesh with what we're doing," Ray Eurquhart, spokesman for the Southside Neighborhood Association, said in an interview.

Southside is afflicted with gangs, narcotics, poverty and run-down and abandoned houses. The association has worked to discourage crime; improve the area's appearance; and pressure the city for better policing, code enforcement and improved streets and utilities.

It has partnered with more than 15 organizations, among them Scientific Properties, the city's "Weed and Seed" anti-crime program, the Durham People's Alliance and, most notably, the Self-Help Community Development Corp.

Self-Help has bought about 45 distressed properties in Southside, intending to rehabilitate, demolish or build as each case warrants, then sell or lease on "affordable" terms.

The nonprofit is also helping residents work out their own "vision of how they would like to see the neighborhood grow," said Evan Covington Chavez, Self-Help's real-estate development head.

One completed collaboration is the Southside Community Center, a renovated duplex at South and Enterprise streets catty-corner from a convenience store neighbors consider a nuisance. Another renovation in the next block is to start in January, Eurquhart said.

"We feel we have a good inventory of properties," said Covington Chavez. "With guidance by the residents we can do something ... We're ready."

Improvement can't come too soon, said Eurquhart.

"We're losing kids" to liquor, narcotics and gangs, he said. "Young girls over here following the thugs. ... We've got to save these folks.

"We've got terrible houses in here," he said. "That doesn't mean terrible people live here."