The City of Dallas city plans to make long-overdue investments near Forest Lane and Audelia Road, aiming to revitalize the area and address residents’ frustrations with ongoing crime.

When Tena Faye looks out over the broken concrete parking lot that now makes up a large portion of what’s left of the Forest Audelia Village strip center, she sees progress.

“People will want to come back and live here again,” Faye said.

Faye, a self-described Midwestern transplant who moved to Dallas a decade ago, says she has seen a subtle change in the area around Forest Lane and Audelia Road in far Northeast Dallas.

The corridor around Forest and Audelia has long suffered from a lack of connectivity with areas south of Interstate 635, instead crowded with several multi-family housing complexes, isolated from amenities like a library or a park.

It has remained one of Dallas’ most dangerous areas for more than a decade, plagued by a variety of property and sometimes violent crime.

Faye said Wednesday she expects the pace of change to pick up with the groundbreaking of a new 1-acre park that will take shape in what is now a parking lot.

“This is really for the kids,” Faye said. “What we give them now will determine where they go later.”

Dallas Park and Recreation director John Jenkins says the park will feature a playground, spray grounds, and what he calls a grand lawn.

“They’re going to appreciate that the city has stepped in and going to create a positive experience in this entire complex for them,” Jenkins said.

Additionally, the park completion late next year or early 2026, will serve as the springboard for redeveloping part of a now city-owned building into a community center.

“We’re going to see kids playing, families playing,” Jenkins said. “We won’t see the negative element that was out here before.”

District 10 council member Kathy Stewart, whose district encompasses parts of Lake Highlands and Northeast Dallas, says while small in size, the park will have an outsized impact.

“This says we do care about what happens at Forest and Audelia,” Stewart said. “We’re not going to be just about enforcement, we’re also going to be about improving the quality of life.”

The Dallas Cowboys on Sunday did their best impression of their glory days with hard-nosed football, dominating the run game alongside a stifling defense.

The Cowboys convincingly defeated the Carolina Panthers 30-14, showcasing multiple standout performances on both offense and defense.

Here are the Cowboys’ players whose stock rose or fell after the Cowboys’ win.

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Jake Ferguson has quickly become a fan favorite in Dallas, and after receiving Pro Bowl honors, many were expecting a breakout year from him.

However, Ferguson has dealt with injuries and has failed to make a significant impact. On Sunday, Ferguson had two catches for 23 yards on four targets. His numbers aren’t too discouraging, considering the Cowboys didn’t need to pass the ball much.

However, when Ferguson has missed time this season, both Luke Schoonmaker and Brevyn Spann-Ford have performed exceptionally well, raising doubts about Ferguson’s future role with the team.

This raises questions about whether Ferguson will remain a key piece moving forward and whether he will sign a second contract in Dallas.

For the second straight game, Jonathan Mingo failed to register a catch. On Sunday, Mingo saw limited playing time and did not receive a single target.

While the Cowboys’ wide receiver group has shown overall improvement as the season has progressed, Mingo has seemingly regressed.

It is particularly surprising that he failed to receive any targets, considering the Cowboys traded a fourth-round pick for him before the trade deadline to bolster their wide receiver corps ahead of the offseason.

In a game where the Cowboys’ defense absolutely dominated, Oruwariye was constantly targeted and was the only Cowboys defensive back to allow a receiving touchdown—an 83-yard pass at the end of the second half.

Oruwariye finished with three solo tackles and zero pass deflections, making him undoubtedly the weak link in an otherwise formidable defensive performance.

Rico Dowdle has improved each week this season, which is exactly what the Cowboys need from their starting running back. Since Dowdle took over as the full-time running back, the Cowboys have had their best run-game since Ezekiel Elliott’s early seasons in the league.

On Sunday, Dowdle had a career day with 25 carries for a career-high 149 yards, averaging six yards per carry. His performance helped the Cowboys surpass their previous season-high team rushing yards by 55 yards.

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Osa Odighizuwa is having a career year in the final season of his rookie contract, adding to the list of star players the Cowboys will need to re-sign.

On Sunday, Odighizuwa recorded four total tackles, three solo tackles, a sack, a tackle for loss, and four quarterback hits.

He has been one of the league’s best interior pass rushers and has continually increased his value as the season has progressed.

Outside of Rico Dowdle, CeeDee Lamb was the only Cowboys’ weapon to make a significant impact on Sunday. Lamb surpassed 100 yards receiving for just the second time this season, finishing with nine catches for 116 yards and a touchdown.

Lamb became just the second player in Cowboys history, alongside Michael Irvin, to achieve four straight seasons of 1,000 receiving yards. It is still early, but Lamb is currently well on pace for a Hall of Fame career.

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Inside a portable classroom at Trinity Basin Preparatory near Redbird, flutist Caely Rodriguez practices keeping her triplets to time.

She sits in a room full of elementary and middle school flutists and clarinetists who are rehearsing the Christmas piece Paseo Navideno.

“Can I hear you at 12 and take the first ending? First flute” says instructor Laura Kidder as her fingers crisply snap to the tempo in the way only music teachers can.

Caely is one of about 300 students who are a part of the Kim Noltemy Young Musicians Program, which provides free lessons and instruments to students in southern Dallas. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays year-round, the program teaches students at five southern Dallas locations: Ebby Halliday Elementary, Maria Moreno Elementary, Ascher Silberstein Elementary, Trinity Basin Prep Ledbetter campus, and Owenwood Farm & Neighborhood Space.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the program, which has survived the pandemic and provided free arts education as programs across the state have faced budget cuts. Fort Worth ISD cut $1.2 million from its upcoming visual and performing arts budget for the 2024-25 school year, according to the Fort Worth Report.

Ashley Alarcon, the program’s manager of teaching and learning, said cuts to arts education make her feel a greater responsibility for the work being done through the program.

While students are learning their octaves and key signatures, Alarcon said the program’s overarching goal is to “[instill] values that make you an aware citizen.”

“Being a citizen that’s aware in this world requires a sense of humility because you want to see beyond yourself to what other people are doing and embrace their talents,” she said.

Music education has proved to have positive effects on adolescents, like increased confidence, creativity and mental and emotional well-being, according to a 2023 research study from the University of Southern California.

Students in the program learn life lessons, including how to embrace and encourage their neighbors, accept their strengths and weaknesses, and show up on days they don’t want to.

Caely, 11, has been in the Young Musicians program since she was just 6. She’s connected with teachers and new friends, especially clarinetists and fellow flutists.

“You learn that you have to come prepared every day, be quiet while everybody else is playing. It helps in the majority of my classes where you just have to be quiet or be disciplined to bring your stuff and not lose any of it,” she said.

The sixth grader said with the help of Alarcon she’s also learned to overcome one of her biggest challenges.

“I played it over and over again until I wouldn’t stop even if I heard a mistake. After I did that a couple of times, I would write down what I did wrong on the piece, and I would write that while I was playing it. So that’s how I overcame that,” she said.

Mariana Lara, 12, is a seventh grader who’s been playing the violin for two years in the Young Musicians program. She said she’s learned how to be patient with herself through practicing the violin.

These days, she’s been working on her vibrato, a challenging technique in which violinists rock their fingers back and forth to subtly change pitch and add richness to their sound.

“In any music that they give us, if it’s hard or a specific part, I have to really go over it to get it right. Sometimes that’s difficult because it gets frustrating for myself,” she said.

Behind the scenes, more than 25 music teachers champion the students’ growth. One of those educators, Roy Gonzalez, has been teaching trombone and trumpet at the program’s Trinity Basin Prep Ledbetter Campus for the last four years.

Gonzalez previously taught at the college level, but now the Young Musicians program has been a special opportunity to teach students who are starting with a blank slate.

“I like that challenge to help give them the best tools from the ground up,” he said. “So when they go to middle school or high school, they have solid fundamentals. They know how to play and they know how to make a beautiful sound.”

He said the program presents challenges because it serves students of all different skill levels and in mostly group settings. But Gonzalez said he’s seen many young musicians in the program improve rapidly. One of his students, a trumpet player, started three months ago and is already playing two-octave scales.

One of his favorite memories from the program was watching the students perform in a concert last fall. Gonzalez said his students make fun of him for crying often, and it was another occasion when he proved them right.

“It’s one of the biggest improvements I’ve heard in such a short period of time. I feel like things were actually clicking in the teaching, clicking in el sistema and they just sounded so beautiful. I just teared up,” he said.

Those performances are made possible by consistent rehearsals. While dark has fallen outside, students gather inside the main room of the portable at Trinity Basin Prep to rehearse Brahms’ “Tragic Overture.”

The tremolo of the violins fills the room as the wind instruments bellow out. Before long, the rolling thunder of the timpani and slashing chords announce the big finale. As soon as the conductor’s hand falls, the room fills with the rumble of chatting and packing up.

Tomorrow, the students will return to do it all over again.

Arts Access is an arts journalism collaboration powered by The Dallas Morning News and KERA.

This community-funded journalism initiative is funded by the Better Together Fund, Carol & Don Glendenning, City of Dallas OAC, Communities Foundation of Texas, The University of Texas at Dallas, The Dallas Foundation, Eugene McDermott Foundation, James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, Jennifer & Peter Altabef and The Meadows Foundation. The News and KERA retain full editorial control of Arts Access’ journalism.