After the sun sets over Tulane Avenue, shadows emerge under corner streetlights between North Claiborne and South Carrollton avenues. Women in high heels and short skirts flag down passing cars, selling themselves for as little as $50. This is what the avenue has become over the past few decades, a notorious destination for prostitution and drug activity.

It wasn't always this way. In the 1940s and 1950s, this was a bustling thoroughfare popular with tourists who stayed at fashionable hotels that dotted the strip. Construction of the interstate highway in the 1960s and later of high-rise hotels downtown took travelers away. Many Tulane Avenue businesses closed and some hotels deteriorated into seedy flophouses.

But city officials hope Tulane Avenue is on the cusp of a renaissance, led by construction of a $2 billion medical complex expected to create 17,000 well-paying jobs. Some entrepreneurs have started to open businesses along the Mid-City corridor. But some find their livelihoods threatened by the crime that prevail on the avenue. They're caught between Tulane Avenue's seedy present and its promising future, uncertain whether their businesses will survive long enough to see it.

Reporter Richard Webster and photographer Ted Jackson share the stories of those business owners, examine the Tulane Avenue real estate market, and describe a night spent in one of the strip's low-rate motel in "Uneasy Street." Read their full package of stories and photos Saturday afternoon on NOLA.com and Sunday in The Times-Picayune.

Tulane Avenue: Views of 14 Gallery: Tulane Avenue: Views of

Share your memories of Tulane Avenue and your thoughts on whether the new medical district will be the key to turn the area around.