http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7267239/
Users of sign language may get new town
Community would be home to deaf and hard-of-hearing
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:00 p.m. ET March 22, 2005
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Plans are being debated this week for the creation
of a new town with the usual amenities: hotels, a convention center,
retail shops and churches. But one thing will be different: Sign
language will be the preferred way to communicate.
The town is designed to make life easier and more practical for deaf
and hard-of-hearing residents, said Terry Sanford, director of town
planning for Nederveld Associates, a Grand Rapids, Mich., company that
is overseeing the project.
“We want it to be a small town with independent shop owners and
enterprises,” he said.
The town would be named Laurent after Laurent Clerc, the French
educator who pioneered sign language in the United States. It is the
brainchild of Marvin Miller, who was born deaf, and his mother-in-law,
M.E. Barwacz.
A week of planning sessions that involves prospective residents and
others began Monday in Madison. The town, to be located just west of
Sioux Falls off Interstate 80, could welcome residents — deaf and
hearing alike — as early as next year.
Plans include shops and homes within walking distance of each other.
Each building would have strobe lights and sirens to warn residents of
fires or other disasters. The businesses will have many windows to let
in as much light as possible.
'We want pioneers'
Architects will incorporate suggestions from the planning sessions for
an overall design plan to be presented on Friday.
“At the end of the process we will have pretty specific plans — house
details, public buildings and street layouts, the retail centers,”
Sanford said.
Ninety-two families and individuals have said they would move to
Laurent, nearly the threshold number needed to apply to become a town.
“We want pioneers,” Miller told the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently
through an interpreter. “Just like those who came to live here way
back when.”
The first residents most likely would work in nearby cities such as
Sioux Falls or Mitchell, Sanford said. But the plan is to build a
community that supports itself by offering food, lodging and other
services for travelers along Interstate 90 — a major byway for sights
including Mount Rushmore National Memorial, the Badlands and the
Sturgis motorcycle rally.
“We are looking at it with open ears because economically, it could be
a fantastic thing for McCook County,” said County Commissioner Ralph
Dybdahl. “You don’t build towns every day.”
© 2005 The Associated Press.
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Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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