here are some of my current ideas for the hall:

Put some benches or hammocks out front and/or in the garden. They will provide a place to sit while smoking, during an event, etc. They provide a spot for quiet repose, allowing one to watch the world go by.
Benches are inviting, I think; they encourage passers by to see what’s up in a different way than a crowd out front does. They are also for us to sit and enjoy what we have made here; to soak it in. consider a neighborhood in which everyone sits out on the front porch…. And you’ll have an idea of what I’m getting at in terms of community building. If the bench idea gets shot down, why not a hammock—that can be taken down and brought inside during non-use.

The garden should be open—that is, it should either not be fenced in, or should not be locked.
The hall is a community space, and so should its yard be. Community gathering places are the goal here, and let me explain what I mean by that. I went to school at New College of Florida, which shaped my thinking with regard to how a community can be created, maintained, and how it can treat its members. Anyhow, at new college we had a central-ish part of campus called palm court. It is where we held our parties, where the clothesline project would get set up, where meetings and study breaks would be held, and where people would sometimes just lie down, and stare up at the palm trees. That’s what I envision for our garden, in some sense.

I bet we have some sidewalk chalk. We should put that outside while the hall is open.
With such a big parking lot right out front, it seems a waste not to allow that to become an art space as well. When people create in public, it creates a kind of (passive) dialogue (I would argue, in the way that magnetic poetry is a form of creating and dialoguing passively). Plus, it adds some more beauty to our neighborhood.

Let’s set up a free table. This is something else I take from new college. If you are getting rid of something, you leave it on the table. When you come through the space, it’s something that you just always check, to see if there’s anything good there. Sometimes folks would dumpster dive and leave bags of bagels on the free table. You’d also find a lot of clothes, shoes, tapes, books, inexplicable junk, etc.
It helps reduce trash. It gets crap out of your hands, and into the hands of someone to whom its not crap. This is like a constant thing, which could of course be supplemented by a big event like the barter bazaar.

We already have a library, of sorts. I would like to see that evolve into a kind of gallery/museum. This is not inspired by New College—I pulled it out of the old noggin from scratch. What I imagine is that people can put their doodles, more serious creations, etc. on display in a specially created space. If you find a cool leaf, feather, rock, skull, etc—that can go in too. If you want to write a story or explanation about something there, add it in. Maybe we could have a Polaroid as part of our downstairs equipment, and photos could go up in this museum space.
In the 80’s this artist collective called Group Material went around (Manhattan, I think, but basically) their neighborhood and collected artifacts from peoples homes. They displayed these as art objects in their gallery space, and the installation was a hit in the community that pitched in to help create it. That’s part of the thinking here, and also it’s yet another way to foster a kind of creative, passive communication.

I wonder if the collective could benefit from an allocations committee. It seems like, ideally, at some point we will have money for more frivolous purposes. In the Florida college system, every student had to pay what were called A&S fees—activity and sports fees, to support like the big football teams at universities. But New College didn’t really have any official sports—ultimate Frisbee, or the Uglies—our women’s soccer team, and little else. So anyway, all the A&S fees from new college students were pooled into a budget, and were doled out by the Student Allocations Committee—a committee of about 8 elected students (2 from each year). ANYONE could take a proposal to the SAC, and the SAC would decide whether or not to grant the requested funds. The SAC would fund just about anything that could be demonstrated to benefit most or all of the campus community—parties, cardboard regattas, barbeques, plays, ice cream socials, etc etc etc. No limits really.
It would be nice to have a set committee deciding things like this, rather than all such proposals going before the collective meeting, or the finance committee, which I suggests deals with the bigger picture and would keep tighter purse-strings. We would get more interesting results, I think, if the finance committee gave a certain budget to our MAC; the MAC would have a different mindset (from the finance committee) regarding their funds, and different criteria for how to spend it. They would only be handling such proposals, and could meet on a regular basis. The common thing about MAC proposals, if its like the SAC, seems to be that it nearly always is used to create some kind of community event.

Another committee proposal is the idea of a disciplinary committee.
Because we are forming requirements for what makes a member, there is a good chance people will fail to meet these requirements. I would then like the collective to request a hearing date with the disciplinary committee. If the date is missed by the member in question, then the collective can decide to strip their status, or put them on probation, or whatever is supposed to be done in this situation, which I imagine is still quite in the air. But the hearing to me seems a more judicious approach—should there be special cases or extenuating circumstances. Also, what if a member damages some equipment or something—the disciplinary committee could decide the action to be taken for situations that aren’t on the books. I’m not even really sure about this idea, but it seems to me that smaller, specialized committees might be more efficient, and that we are kind of already heading in this direction.

In summary, my visions for the hall and its interaction among members and in the community are:
Community spaces outdoors for repose, chat, and creativity
Special spaces inside for creative, passive “communication”
A free table or bin for disposal/treasure hunting
Some additional committees, maybe with elected members, specialized for possibly emerging concerns within the collective.