The digital billboards planned for the large mixed-use development at 1100 East Market Street have captured the most public attention, but the more interesting feature of that project is arguably its new retail-fronted pedestrian street.

Currently the 1100 block of Market St. is a solid wall, unbroken by any smaller through streets, but National Real Estate Development’s plan is to build two distinct buildings on the site, separated by Chestnut Walk – a pedestrian passageway that eventually will stretch from Chestnut to Market, flanked on both sides by retail. The project will also reactivate private Ludlow and Clover Streets as pedestrian-centered, multi-modal streets running east and west.

What the National Real Estate Development team is envisioning is an organic extension of the highly successful mixed-use Gayborhood/Midtown Village corridors up to Market Street.

Ludlow Street, stricken from the city’s street map and used mainly by Family Court and the parking garage on Chestnut Street for private parking and loading purposes, will be the first street to be reactivated, with Clover Street coming on in Phase 2. Interestingly, both will remain privately owned even as they function most of the time as public streets. The property owners will retain the right to close them to traffic for events.

Ludlow’s reinvention is only possible, National Real Estate Development’s Dan Killinger told PlanPhilly, because the first phase of the project will “put all of that [parking and loading ] in the basement, with an access off of 12th St, so that Ludlow can be reopened with a single lane for cars, and active retail on both sides.”

“The next move,” he said, “is to create a pedestrian path that bisects that. So instead of having heavy traffic around the four edges [of Market, Chestnut, 11th, and 12th] you’ll have slow vehicular traffic through the middle and also pedestrian traffic.”

Here’s what Ludlow looks like now: