But the bright lights, restaurants, hotels and pedestrian-friendly shopping district are nowhere to be seen. The severe recession has sabotaged much of the planned development around the $1.1 billion stadium, whose inaugural event will be a June 6 concert featuring George Strait and Reba McEntire.

Aside from road improvements, a row of new townhomes and a few more commercial vacancies, the neighborhoods surrounding the Cowboys stadium differ little from when construction began. And the chances of any major development opening in time for the 2011 Super Bowl are shrinking daily.

"We're totally helpless to make that go forward until we're over this problem that we're having," Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said. "The economy is beyond anyone's control."

The 1.2 million-square-foot Glorypark retail, residential and entertainment project from Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks is still being redesigned after nine months on the shelf and has no timeline yet. When the Cowboys kick off their first preseason game in late summer, it's likely that rather than upscale sports bars, the closest dining will be CiCi's Pizza, Panda Express, Pitt Grill and a handful of other small restaurants.

Craig A. Depken, an economist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said that historically, sports arenas don't attract as much development as is promised by backers. That's particularly true for stadiums in less densely developed areas, he said.

"There was very much an implicit assumption by the proponents of the [Cowboys] stadium that development would come," said Depken, who previously taught at the University of Texas at Arlington. "I'm not surprised that it hasn't happened because oftentimes it does not."

DMN