A couple of weeks back I took the boy to the batting cages at Top Golf on Park Lane so he could knock off some rust before baseball season. The drive involved a routinely harrowing pass through the Five Points intersection in Vickery Meadow, during which we were almost hit by a driver confounded by the tangle of traffic lights; we almost hit a pedestrian who darted into the maze of crosswalks; and we were cut off by cops aiming toward a vacant field to bust up a drug deal cooking in broad daylight.

In other words, just another day — another two minutes — in the gateway to Vickery Meadow, where some 15,000 residents crowded into outdated apartment complexes speak dozens of languages the city pretends it can't understand when it's looking the other way.

So, apropos of nothing, other than remembering that the city's been talking since forever about disentangling this perilous snarl and investing some capital in this part of town, I started calling around to ask why nothing has ever happened. At which point I received, from various elected and interested sources, lengthy discourses on the what-coulda-beens and what-shoulda-beens, among them failed efforts to secure federal grant dollars to calm the chaos. I also discovered that yet another outside look-see has been commissioned by a City Hall that until recently viewed Vickery Meadow as the city's hottest high-crime hot spot rather than a cosmopolitan opportunity.

"No doubt, there have been a lot of dropped balls," said architect Mark Wolf, a member of the Vickery Public Improvement District and author of a recent plan drafted to dull the edges off the Five Points, where Park Lane meets Ridgecrest Road meets Fair Oaks Avenue just a few blocks off Greenville Avenue. The reason: City officials long viewed Vickery Meadow's mostly refugee and immigrant population as "those people over there," he said.

What if Five Points could look like this ... ((Courtesy Vickery Public Improvement District))

"It's because we're poor," said Kenneth Smith, a 63-year-old hanging out Wednesday evening beneath the peeling, faded red awning at the beer and wine store that's just a few feet from the middle school named for the black man whose lawsuit led to the desegregation of the Dallas ISD. Smith, who said he'd once been a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps, lives just across the parking lot, in the Wildflower Apartment complex, where two men were shot to death last month. As the sun was setting, Smith and some buddies were polishing off a bottle of pink wine as cops slowly cruised the parking lot.

A few feet away, young children heading home from Jack Lowe Sr. Elementary and tired of waiting for the "walk" light that never lit up dodged traffic along Fair Oaks. Around the corner, a man was passed out in the vacant field where, years ago, the city promised to plant a library that has yet to take root. Someone else was sleeping beneath the temporary art installation in which Mohammed Adam, a homeless refugee from Darfur, was found dead last month.

1 / 4... instead of this, which is a place where kids are terrified of crossing the street?((Robert Wilonsky / Staff writer)) 2 / 4Kassahun Maru at the Vickery Meadow grocery store he's owned and operated since 1993((Wilonsky)) 3 / 4A door on the side of the Five Points beer and wine store pays homage to two men recently killed in an apartment complex next door.((Wilonsky)) 4 / 4One person is sleeping next to this temporary art installation; another is sleeping beneath it. This is sitting on the site where the city had promised to build a library.((Wilonsky))

For more than a decade, the city has wrestled with fixing the Five Points, where, in the words of Vickery Public Improvement District's executive director ,Barry Annino, "everything leads into nothing." City Hall has commissioned studies and vied for federal dollars in the hopes of salvaging a neighborhood that's barely drivable, much less hardly walkable. Kassahun Maru, who in 1993 opened the Ethiopian grocery in the Five Points that sells what has to be the city's best loaf of bread, has seen all the plans and heard all the promises. And still, he said Wednesday, "the area's going down."

"And I don't know why," Maru said. "Whole Foods is here, within walking distance. The Shops at Park Lane, walking distance. I don't know why they're afraid to develop. I don't l know why they're afraid of coming to this section. It's a good area. But I hope they will come soon."

In 2013, Portland planner John Fregonese turned into the city a Vickery Meadow Station Area Plan intended to transform the areas around the Park Lane and Walnut Hill light-rail stations into transit-oriented developments. Developers and stakeholders advocated for new apartments and restaurants; residents asked for the most basic of basics, safety and sidewalks. The plan suggested turning Park into a so-called complete street with bike lanes; four years later, you can still find bar ditches along the Five Points.

Then, in 2014, there emerged a proposal that would have converted Five Points into a roundabout surrounded by new apartments with ground-floor retail and restaurants, an obvious idea in a neighborhood represented by newcomers from dozens of countries. The Washington State-based Walkable and Livable Communities Institute's concept was unveiled at a health forum at the University of North Texas and, from what I can tell, was never again discussed.

The Washington State-based Walkable and Livable Communities Institute proposed a roundabout for the Five Points in 2014.

A year after that, in 2015, the Federal Highway Administration sent a team of investigators to Five Points as part of a pilot project to eyeball what anyone can see out their car window at 30 mph: The intersection is a "multiple threat." The city, DART and others chased after a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery Grant. But the feds took a pass. Twice.

So now we're back to studying the problem: On Wednesday it was announced that the University of Texas at Arlington's Institute of Urban Studies create a "strategic plan" for Vickery Meadow, which will involve about six months' worth of interviews with residents and apartment owners. After which ... I'd say it's hard to say, but I fear but history has provided a pretty reliable map along that familiar road to nowhere.

"What I said to city staff is these projects, they're so expensive, we can't let perfectness get in the way of creating a safe, walkable neighborhood," said Jennifer Staubach Gates, who has proven to be Vickery Meadow's best advocate on the City Council. "And we'll do it with whatever money I can find, even if it's just sidewalks. If we can't do a complete street with bike lanes, I need to get the kids safely to school."

Which seems like a pretty reasonable ask.

The guys hanging out at the beer store Wednesday night had but one request of the city: "Treat us like you treat everybody else," said 39-year-old Carlos Williams, a sober, serious man who asked as many questions as he answered about why city government had abandoned the Five Points.

"If that was happening," he said, pointing at me, "you wouldn't be out here."