Jeff Schommer, one of the designers, said the town of Laurent will make it easy for residents to get to know their neighbors.

"You can't go zipping past each other," said Schommer, of the Charrette Center in Minneapolis. "This is a community where people are not going to be hearing horns. We control speed of traffic through thinning of the streets."

M.E. Barwacz and Marvin Miller, both of Sioux Falls, want to build Laurent at Interstate 90 and U.S. Highway 81, south of the McCook County farming town of Salem.

Developing the site would cost "well over $100 million," Miller said.

It would be named after French educator Laurent Clerc, who pioneered sign language in the United States in 1815.

Although Laurent would be open to anyone, Miller and Barwacz envision it as a place where deaf, hard-of-hearing and others who use sign language can live and pursue business and civic interests.

An audience of about 100 showed up at Camp Lakodia near Madison Friday night to hear plans for the town, which could welcome its first residents as early as next year.

"It boggles the mind," said Dan Smith, 54, a veterinarian from Montrose. "Can you imagine coming out here and setting up a town?"

Terry Sanford, planning director for Nederveld Associates in Grand Rapids, Mich., is helping to guide the Laurent project.

He and 13 specialists from Minneapolis, Kansas City and Colorado spent the week at the camp, a resort west of Madison owned by Communication Services for the Deaf of Sioux Falls.

Laurent would borrow from a variety of urban models. But its layout would feature narrow streets to slow down traffic and awnings and roof lines to shield the sun and reduce glare that interferes with sign language.

Its housing model would revive a lifestyle of front-porch conversations once common in America. Houses would be closer with porches near the street to encourage communication, contrary to other cities putting new housing on bigger lots for more privacy.

The layout would include a boulevard lined with linden trees. A main street would allow driving 30 to 35 mph, but the overall design would favor pedestrians, bicycles and slow cars.

A residential street in other cities might be 50 feet curb to curb, Schommer said. Laurent would have its 50-foot streets, but nearly half that width would be given to sidewalks and greenway, leaving 26 feet for two parking lanes and barely two lanes of traffic.

The town would have a school serving 450 children through 12th grade. It would have its own police, water tower, warning strobes and a sewer system with a mechanical plant but no lagoon.

A statue would honor Clerc, while a gas station and car wash would serve motorists hopping off Exit 364. The tallest building might be four stories.

Nearly 100 families so far are pledging to come.

Phil Bravin, a deaf Sioux Falls resident said he would consider living in Laurent if he wasn't retiring to Vermont this summer.

"It's not utopia," said Bravin, 59. "But it is something people have a need for."

From Argus Leader