Deaf Man Dream to Build a Deaf Town

Remember the Wyndholme Village? It was supposed to be a breathtakingly beautiful, private community designed for deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing people, age 55 years and up. The building plan was to build a deaf community with 928 residences on the 24 acres of land in neighboring Baltimore County where one investor, Lancelotta grew up. The land was inherited and Lancelotta had gotten the idea to build a deaf retirement community because his mother’s family was hard of hearing. The new community would offer 24-hour security, individual emergency response systems and an around-the-clock, 7 days-a-week staffed gatehouse, lobby reception area, theatre, hotel rooms, transportation and much more Even though some 20 contracts were drawn up from interested Deaf buyers to buy residences it was not enough and was up to the deaf community to decide if they wanted to invest in this project.

For awhile, this was an attempt to build an unique village specifically for deaf and hard of hearing people but for various reasons it failed. According to Lancelotta everything was lined up in the fall of 1998. The Wyndholme project had $7.15 million in financing promised in October of 1998 from a Colorado lender, Cornerstone Private Capital. Soon after the promise an embezzlement scandal rocked the firm and all new lending dried up. Lancelotta was forced to file for bankruptcy and later on sold the property for 4.6 million dollars at an auction. The attempt to build a small but specialized deaf community like Wyndholme Village requires huge financial commitment and planning, and desire from the deaf/Deaf community to invest in such an idea is hard. The timing of Wyndholme Village was right but not before the lending institution bailed out. A hard lesson learned. (Note the expired website http://www.wyndholmevillage.com but can be found in www.archive.org).

And now we have this next dream coming from a different person. A Deaf man wanting to build an entire Deaf community of signers out in South Dakota near interstate Highway 90 between the cities of Sioux Falls and Mitchell. Marvin Miller's idea is provoking this new pioneer-type of land rush "homesteading" fever among Deaf people (and hearing signers) with more than 90 families or individuals from 17 states along with a few people from England and Australia who have already signed on to be part of this new town in South Dakota. The name of the new town is to be called Laurent after the French educator who founded the first school for the deaf in the United States.

This would be a true modern day pioneering effort and spirit in more than 100 years. Will it fail? Only time, perserverance, ingenuity and will power will answer this. After all this is America where anything you set your mind to it, you can succeed. America is truly the land of opportunity and freedom.

Check out the latest news from Laurent, South Dakota. And, oh, please do visit Marvin Miller's blogsite. Lots of pictures and blogs with archive going back to November 2003.

BTW, I'm still going to use and talk on my cell phone whenever I visit Laurent, SD.