Market Street, we hardly knew ye.

For scores of younger (and slightly older) city workers and residents, that’s the reality of downtown Wilmington’s most well-known corridor. Traces of the old Market Street still exist, sure, but just try to imagine what it was like to walk those blocks, busy bodies spilling in every direction, storefronts looking like scenes lifted from a painting, buildings alive and full. A contagious energy that stretched far and reached wide. Market Street wasn’t just the center of the city, it was the city.

Now try to imagine Market Street looking and feeling and sounding that way again. Working professionals taking up residence in the city, shopping and eating and hanging out. The buzz of circling crowds forming around jam sessions and filling up sidewalk cafes. Life after 5 p.m. and on weekends. Blocks connected not by geography but by vision.

It can happen, but not easily, and certainly not quickly. Most insiders know the time and unrelenting energy it will take to get there. And so perhaps the question isn’t can it happen, but how long before people realize it already has?

If you want a real story of life after death, do a little research on South Beach, Miami. Today, spring breakers flock to its posh clubs and shopping district, and fashion photographers love its colorful backdrop. Housing values are way, way up; an air of elitism and super-wealth is everywhere. Some 25 years ago, though, South Beach was falling apart, hit hard by crime and drug dealers. So sorry was its condition that it made for easy pickings in the movie Scarface and the TV show Miami Vice.

“South Beach wasn’t always South Beach,” says Lee Mikles, CEO of interactive marketing firm the Archer Group. “The businesses in the area got together to make sure it wouldn’t be forgotten.”

This fall, Mikles and his firm will be moving into the Lower Market Design District, also known as LOMA – the name chosen by a group of developers, businesses, nonprofits, and creative institutions who are hoping to attract a like-minded class of tenants to the lower blocks of Market Street. “We needed more space, and we wanted an address that defined us,” Mikles says, showing off LOMA’s eye-catching marketing materials. (A raw, artsy neighborhood—something that would be right at home in SoHo or on Philadelphia’s South Street—anchors the design.)

LOMA has a vision, and it’s defined in part: “The Lower Market Design District will soon become the address for creative professionals in Delaware: architects, designers, retailers, and restaurateurs who recognize their unique role in defining the culture of a region.”

Chris Winburn is the vice president of Preservation Initiatives, a firm in Ships Tavern that specializes in “adaptive re-use of old buildings.” (The old buildings that surround Preservation Initiatives’ office, Winburn likes to say, are like “bookmarks of the past.”) He says that LOMA will appeal to tenants who not only think creatively but who share similar ideals, values, even demographics. “It’s not bankers and lawyers who will come here,” he says. “We want advertising agencies, PR firms, architects, interior designers, computer-networking folks—that’s who we’re targeting.”

Preservation Initiatives’ current Market Street projects—The Lippincott, a 50,000-square-foot mixed-use venture on the 300 block; and the Dry Goods building, a 25,000-square-foot endeavor a couple of blocks up that will include office space, retail space, and apartments—will include solar paneling and are being built with energy-efficient specifications. “These people are going to be younger; they’re going to be environmentally friendly,” Winburn says. “It speaks to an ethos, a type of person who is forward-thinking. It’s going to resonate with creative people who want change.”

Some Tenants, such as Adam Vassar, who owns Vassar Interiors, an upscale furniture store, and Elli + Co, a flooring company, hopped on board early. “We support a lot of architects and designers, and the location is very easy for them to get to us,” says Elli + Co managing partner Youness Baftechi, who moved the store from Lancaster Avenue to the 200 block of Market Street two years ago. “We thought it would be a really great fit.”

LOMA would have to agree. Besides being of the creative class Winburn speaks of, Elli + Co scores another plus for selling environmentally-considerate “green products”—flooring made of cork and bamboo.

Baftechi predicts it will be another few years before LOMA sees its heavily anticipated turnaround. The seeds are there, he says.

Winburn thinks so, too; he says it could take even less time, “about 18 to 24 months before we’ll see a higher activity level.” But what LOMA—indeed, most of Market Street—suffers from is a type of chicken-and-egg syndrome. Recovering neighborhoods need businesses and tenants to move in; businesses and tenants want some existing features in place first. Round and round it goes.

To crack the egg (or hatch it, rather), developers need a strong vision, not just for the buildings they’re buying and renovating, but for the additional blocks that surround them. They need a plan.

The Buccini/Pollin Group has taken over much of the city (somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of downtown’s office inventory, actually). Look anywhere and you’ll likely see one of their buildings or works-in-progress. What they have in mind for Market Street, however, is about sharing the pie. They have a plan.

It goes something like this: The spectrum of center-city Market Street, already anchored by arts organizations such as the DuPont Theatre and the Grand Opera House on the upper end and the Riverfront on the lower end, will be filled in between with restaurants and chic retail spots, and, of course, LOMA. Each block or couple of blocks will have its own identity while feeling like a part of the bigger vision. “From Eighth street north, you’ve got your fine dining area,” begins BPG development manager Jackie Ivy, who is working on the firm’s Market Street projects. “That’s where you’d put a nice restaurant, so you can feed off the DuPont Theatre and the Grand. Then from Eighth to Sixth is a really good area for your cool retail. From Sixth and below, you’ve got some interesting things happening. The 500 block has the Historical Society and Kuumba Academy. DCAD just bought the Saville, which they’re using exclusively for their students. So it’s an incredibly stable area, because you know these folks aren’t going anywhere.”

The idea to string the blocks together is something that occurred to partner Chris Buccini as he walked the nine blocks from The Residences at Rodney Square, where he had an apartment, to BPG’s Wilmington headquarters on A Street every morning. “Chris was living in The Residences and walking to work,” Ivy says. “And he asked himself, ‘How hard can it be to develop nine blocks?’”

Hopeful words. Wilmington’s size and accessibility have already lent themselves to promising development by way of Riverfront projects such as Christina Landing. Ivy sees more left to do. “We’re the last little city on the East Coast that hasn’t been developed.”

In the June/July issue of Citylife, Market Street Program manager Clarence Wright, all of 27 years old, spoke of the uphill battle Market Street faces if it wants to return to the epicenter of downtown Wilmington. “The real mission is incremental,” Wright said of the program, which aims to inject Market Street with a sense of its past while building energy for its future. Once a series of “small victories” stockpiles, he said, “those small victories turn into big victories.”

One of those victories, Wright says, would be to draw the city’s business and legal professionals out of their enclosed office towers. These facilities often include full-scale amenities—parking garage, cafeteria, daycare, fitness center—that cover all concerns. But if you can show these city workers what Market Street has to offer, Wright believes, they’ll keep coming back or stay after work to stroll the streets. Just like the old days.

“We want to capitalize on existing assets,” he says, noting the arts community’s strong presence and the many historic buildings whose facades are still intact. Jam sessions have proven especially popular in attracting crowds. “Eventually, we want this to be an 18-hour-a-day community.”

Fortunately, so do a lot of other folks on Market Street, and that’s what counts.