Economic development here in South Oak Cliff can be a good news/bad news proposition.

Yay! A brand-new building houses a brand-new business on the corner of Hampton and Illinois! Boo! It's another %^#@$ check-cashing business.

Sure, it's nice to see a fresh new building replace the ratty nail salon that sat on that corner. But this new storefront offers nothing my neighborhood needs. There's another check-cashing place a few doors down in the same shopping center and yet another across Illinois.

While it's admittedly not scientific research, a search of "check cashing" on an online phone directory turned up 82 listings within a five-mile radius of my ZIP code. Nearly every shopping strip in the area has one. My husband and I joke about that, but it's dreary.

New business is great. New check-cashing business ... not so much.

I am similarly ambivalent about reports that Kroger may be willing to upgrade its Wynnewood Village store. Good news? Sort of. We've seen swell supermarkets come and go down here. Our snazzy Albertson's at Hampton and Ledbetter opened with fanfare and closed with a whimper. It was replaced with a nice Fiesta, but will that last?

We have an enormous new Carnival on Illinois and Westmoreland, but the Carnival chain was recently purchased by Fiesta. That means one of these supermarkets will surely go the way of our only Starbucks, which was built brand new in the Carnival shopping center and lasted about six months. Either the Carnival or the Fiesta is surely doomed to close, leaving us with yet another big, empty building with acres of parking lot left to crumble.

If Kroger invests a bunch of money in Wynnewood Village, will it reap good publicity and then bail out altogether six months later?

We used to have a Kroger on Hampton and Ledbetter, but that closed a long time ago. The good news is that a charter school has breathed life into the building. But the little school doesn't need the acres of parking lot on which it sits.

After all, there's plenty of parking right across Hampton road, in a large shopping center that used to have an Eckerd, a clinic and a dry cleaner. Now, only the dry cleaner hangs on. And the landscape there is not at all enhanced by the adjacent corner lot of rubble where a Chevron used to stand.

I have visions of Kroger investing a bunch of money in its Wynnewood Village store, reaping accolades, and then deciding it overspent and bailing altogether six months later, leaving us with more ugly nothing and adjacent parking.

Maybe we don't need North Dallas-style shopping centers here. Maybe we need sustainable businesses. And maybe we need to offer incentives for businesses to use existing buildings instead of building new properties.

I'm starting to prefer businesses that don't invest too much, since they might actually stay open – except those businesses seem most often to be low-overhead check-cashing places. I wish the density could be diluted with businesses that will actually enhance the 'hood.

Perhaps what we need is an incubator for small businesses down here, to help them succeed in existing spaces. I've started a small personal campaign on Yelp.com, reviewing businesses south of the Trinity, in the hope I can help Cliff dwellers spend their money close to home and boost deserving businesses – businesses that locals can use and enjoy in day-to-day life.

We've been getting a lot of new warehouse distribution centers in my neighborhood. Good news/bad news. They bring jobs, which is good. But I wish something more interesting than check-cashing businesses would follow.

And not self-storage warehouses. We have 13 of those in that five-mile radius.

Sophia Dembling lives in South Oak Cliff and tries to patronize southern Dallas businesses as much as possible. Her Web site is www.sophiadembling.com.

READ previous commentary about bridging Dallas' north-south gap at www.dallasnews.com/opinion/northsouth