It has been just over a year since the City of Durham and the St. Louis development firm McCormack Baron Salazar joined forces to rebuild the twice-failed Rolling Hills subdivision and adjoining Southside neighborhood.

Since then, on the ground, not much has changed.

Siding, perhaps, has faded a bit more, a few more doors and windows are boarded over. The streets are still patchy and, despite the occasional barbecue grill or basketball in a tended yard, the 20-acre Rolling Hills site just off the Durham Freeway presents a picture of abandonment.

"It's just disappointing, man," said Ray Eurquhart, a spokesman for the Southside Neighborhood Association. "They've been working all this time and nothing's happened."

But some things have happened, according to the city's community development department; and more visible progress should appear early in the new year.

"We're very hopeful," said Stan Mulvihill, a McCormack Baron vice president.

A history

Rolling Hills stands in what was, 40 years ago, a residential area of Hayti -- Durham's first black neighborhood. The Durham Freeway in the 1960s and Urban Renewal in the 1970s cleared much of the area for private developers to rebuild.

In those decades, though, capital and population were leaving inner cities nationwide. Hayti redevelopers were slow to appear and, when they did, their success was limited.

Since 1985, two developers have tried to build Rolling Hills on a prominent ridge at Lakewood Avenue and South Roxboro Street. Both failed to build out and sell and, in 2003, the city foreclosed for delinquent loans.

By foreclosing, the city took ownership of 32 vacant lots and two unfinished houses, about half the tract. With more than $6 million in public money already invested there in site improvements, grants and loans, the city began looking for interested developers in late 2005.

An understanding

In September 2006, the city signed an agreement with McCormack Baron Salazar, a company with extensive experience in inner-city redevelopment, and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse of Baltimore, a firm already at work renovating part of the American Tobacco campus.

McCormack/Struever's idea went beyond Rolling Hills per se. To make Rolling Hills work, they said, the surrounding area needed uplifting as well, and they proposed including Southside -- an area immediately to the west that is plagued with gangs, narcotics, poverty and run-down or abandoned housing.

In December 2007, the city council approved spending $2.7 million to buy the 51 privately owned residences in Rolling Hills on the other half of the tract and relocate their residents; and $325,000 for planning the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment -- a sum McCormack Baron would have to match, dollar for dollar.

Through the spring of 2008, McCormack Baron convened several meetings of a Rolling Hills/Southside Revitalization Initiative Steering Committee, a group representing area residents, churches, businesses and other interests.

The committee set some procedures for itself, determined some things it wanted and some it didn't, and defined the area where revitalizing would take place. After its last meeting, its members were ready for real planning to start.

A hiatus

That was in May. Since then, Struever Bros. has dropped out of the partnership. For its part, the city has forged ahead: Associate community development director Larry Jarvis said in December that, of the 51 parcels, the city has bought or secured options on 33.

However, Jarvis said, his department will be looking for money, too. The estimated cost now for purchases and relocation is close to $5 million. (The council only appropriated $2.7 million, but did agree that spending could, if necessary, go as high as $6 million.)

As for that real planning -- in May, Mulvihill said he hoped to start real planning in July. But finding sources of his company's $325,000 share of planning costs, in a receding economy, has taken more time than he expected.

In December, Mulvihill said he thought he was close to closing a deal. "We're continuing to have the kind of conversations we need to have," he said. "The only thing we're waiting on is really to do the master site planning with the community."

At least one member of the community is tired of waiting.

While the city negotiated with property owners and McCormack Baron looked for money, "There was still work that could be done," said Eurquhart, who grew up in Hayti and has bad memories of what he calls "urban removal." At least, the citizens to be affected could have been kept much better informed.

"Where there is no information, there's just rumors and people just get distressed," he said.

"I'm really sensitive [about] how working-class and poor people have been jerked around."