Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings' GrowSouth effort is winding down just as he feels it's getting started.

"I don't even think we've scratched the surface here," he said.

The mayor on Thursday evening gave his sixth -- and possibly last -- annual presentation on his signature initiative to bolster economic development in southern Dallas. Before a packed crowd at the Trinity Forest Golf Club, Rawlings pointed to metrics and projects that appeared to show some improvements since he began preaching the GrowSouth gospel seven years ago. But a few numbers were also heading the wrong way, and the mayor lamented in an interview beforehand that he hasn't seen some of the growth he's wanted for years.

Rawlings said his biggest success was putting southern Dallas at the front of people's minds. Everything else -- the grand ambitions of a more equal city and vast improvements in quality of life -- is going to take time. Years after Rawlings resumes his life as a private North Dallas resident, anyway.

Rawlings' GrowSouth efforts have evolved over the years. He has focused on so-called high-impact landlords who own large numbers of single-family homes, which also left him mired in a dispute over gentrification with one of them. He has fought for programs to reduce the loose dogs that roam Dallas neighborhoods. And he has called for better educational programs.

While GrowSouth sometimes highlights investments that were happening anyway, other ideas espoused from the mayor's bully pulpit eventually became public policy -- with a lot of help from others on the City Council and in the private sector.

Rawlings said he still has hopes for his last year and the years ahead. He announced Impact Dallas Capital will pay for a Deloitte study of investments in southern Dallas. He hopes it will have a similar effect as a Boston Consulting Group study on loose dogs in the city.

But GrowSouth could struggle for relevance. A year from now, Rawlings will be on his way out of office. City Manager T.C. Broadnax's administration has taken a different tack with a new housing policy based on a market-value analysis of Dallas neighborhoods. And city leadership is planning to develop a new comprehensive economic development policy in the months ahead.

Rawlings showed off the market-value analysis in his hourlong presentation. He said beforehand that if he had it seven years ago, he would have picked a different set of target areas for his initiative.

And he was particularly frustrated by some of the economic development that never came, such as the still-vacant land across from the Veterans Affairs Hospital, which was supposed to become Patriots Crossing. He was also hoping to see more growth around the nearby city-subsidized Rudy's Chicken.

Violent crime has also been up and school enrollment down.

Rawlings added that his latest GrowSouth effort, Pleasant Grove Now, is off to a good start, but tangible progress could take time.

The mayor also laid out some broad suggestions for his successor, such as a reliance on metrics and a push for businesses.

But Rawlings touted some plans already finished and in the works, such as the redevelopment of the once-and-future Red Bird Mall and the Trinity Forest Golf Course, which hosted the AT&T Byron Nelson last week. He said the tournament was proof that perceptions are changing and that good things can come to southern Dallas.

Shirley Davidson, who lives in the area, said the golf course and Audubon Center are indeed improvements on what used to be there: a literal dump. But Davidson, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that forced the city to clean up the Deepwood landfill, said she doesn't believe the golf course helps people who live in southern Dallas.

"I don't see what it's really doing for the neighborhood," she said.

And Rawlings has had plenty of critics over the years who see GrowSouth as a wrongheaded and ineffective remedy for decades of neglect.

But Rawlings' supporters say the mayor did what he could and laid a solid foundation for the future. Many of them echoed some version of the same idea: Southern Dallas didn't become neglected overnight or in a year, and it couldn't be fixed that quickly either.

David Marquis, an Oak Cliff activist, said growth in southern Dallas is "just getting started." Ken Carter, a public relations guru who once served as former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill's spokesman, said Rawlings "kind of laid everything out for the next mayor." Red Bird Mall developer Peter Brodsky said he hopes that GrowSouth isn't ending and that the mayor has drawn attention to "a part of the city that the best you can say was overlooked."

Council member Tennell Atkins said while he wanted to see more progress, he was grateful that the mayor hasn't given up on GrowSouth.

"I'm glad that he's still pushing," Atkins said. "He could've jumped off the train and done something else, but he still said, 'We've got to do something about southern Dallas."