New lights shine over Market East

Testing is underway for a flashy, high tech video billboard atop the iconic former Lit Bros. department store building in Center City.

The testing of the wraparound LED signs rising 14 feet above the building's roofline at the corner of 7th and Market Streets has begun later than a hoped-for New Year's Eve debut.

The signs, the first of surely more to come as major redevelopment proposals firm up for the stretch known as Market East, will hopefully help ignite a transformation of the corridor from gray and ghostly castoff to its onetime status as a must-see slice of the big city, officials say.

The block side building, now known as the Mellon Independence Center, is actually 33 buildings constructed between 1859 and 1918 and cobbled together in a uniform Renaissance Revival style.