Suggestions for plugins to use for a specific group WordPress site?

Hello!

I have made a couple WordPress sites so am familiar with WordPress but far from an expert so I’m hoping some of you guys can point me in the right direction…

I work at a nuclear power plant that is getting shut down. I’d like to make a WordPress site for everyone to keep in touch with for both friendship purposes and business connections at other nuke plants. Ideally this would probably be a Facebook Group but there are a lot of people out there who don’t use Facebook so I want to give them an option too. I have some ideas but have no clue what plugin would do it or would be best… when I do a search I get TONS of hits and I’m spending a lot of time hunting through them so hoping you guys might know off the top of your head ??

If you have an idea what plugin would be best for the below ideas, that would be great!

* I’m thinking to allow self registration as a Subscriber then when I approve them, bump them up to an Author to allow them to post to the blog whenever they want.

* I want the users to be able to input, during registration, their current job/position as well as their personal email, facebook link, zip code, and phone number, if desired. I see there is user information that can be entered but it isn’t what I want. I saw some plugins that allowed “custom fields” or a more customized input of info. What else I’d like to do is have a page (maybe?) that generated a table/list of the users with names and email addresses (and maybe Facebook page). Is there a plugin that does this?

* I’d like a page that displayed a Google Map of the users (based off their zip code I’m thinking) that would be current based on what the users have in their profile. Is there a plugin that does this and will show user locations?

* I’m thinking of maybe a forum too within the blog but that might be redundant if each user can post and make comments? Hmm? Thoughts on this? I’m thinking it might be neat but might not really be necessary if they use regular posting? Maybe it would be better to just use the forum and not have them post? Not sure here?

* All this info would only be able to be seen by registered “Authors”. That way it keeps their info private as it is just meant to be used by this select group of people to stay in touch with each other.

* I know I can have these blog posts automatically post to a Facebook Group but is there a way to do this in reverse… make the Facebook posts automatically post to the blog?

Thanks much for any suggestions or even additional ideas. Just looking for the best way for all of us to stay in touch as we scatter throughout the USA going into new careers as well as see where people went so if they want to go to there too they know who to contact to see about putting in a good word for them ??

Thanks!