Cross Reference User Accounts, Places, Events: Where To Start?

I consider myself to have moderate knowledge of wordpress and am comfortable digging around themes, creating child themes and doing some light programming.

My goal is to create a site which can cross reference places, user accounts, and events. For instance I want to be able to say this place has the following events coming up, or this user is associated with this place. Or this user created/is going to this event.

I am not looking for a how to or anything like that, I am just looking for some general guidance to get me started.

My idea is to use WP Google Maps or similar to create a map of places. These places can then be linked to an internal database of places (I was thinking of using custom post types, can anyone verify this is a good direction?)

I would use Timely or similar to create a calendar. That would handle the events.

I am at a loss as how to deal with the user accounts. I was looking at buddypress but honestly I think it is too much. I need simple user account creation and management with a few roles and the ability to associate these as described.

Thank you all for any assistance.