Christopher Hall
Chris grew up on a farm in Vermont and progressively moved out west following college and graduate school in the performing arts. Chris co-founded a nonprofit dance-theatre company in downtown San Diego and built that organization with the Artistic Director into one of the city’s beloved institutions. The company offered 60+ dance classes per week, produced nearly 30 original, full-length performance works staged in theatres throughout the city (many selected as ‘Critic’s Pick’), and one of if not the largest dance festivals of its kind in the nation for 11 years in Balboa Park, presenting 75 companies on four stages for 10,000+ residents and tourists, free to the public. Chris has been building community since 1994, working with board members, community and political leaders, donors, grant-makers, and countless people who have participated in nonprofit programs.
Chris joined the board of directors of C3, Citizens Coordinate for Century 3, in San Diego. This membership organization is the guiding light for development, transit, urban planning, architecture, and creating communities and has dozens of members in these professional areas. Chris was also publicly elected to represent businesses in the Redevelopment Project Area of downtown San Diego on the Center City Advisory Committee to oversee urban planning, transit, and redevelopment, including the 20-year Downtown Community Plan.
The last thing Chris did before moving to the Illinois Valley to homestead (in part, getting back to his Vermont roots) was to create the 10th Avenue Theatre in downtown San Diego by retrofitting a large four-story concrete church from 1928 with a 100-seat black box theatre, two floors of rehearsal and office space, and a rooftop event space (that was formerly a rooftop basketball court).
Chris co-founded the Cave Junction Farmers Market (CJFM) in 2013, served as its Market manager for the first year, then served as its president for five years and its treasurer for three years. He currently serves as its bookkeeper. The CJFM brings together hundreds of people every Friday evening from April through October around local organic products, crafts, food, and music. Chris also helped establish the RiverStars Performing Arts organization and raised over $450,000 in its first four years ($270,000 of it was a Studio to School five-year grant from the Oregon Community Foundation). He also volunteered during that time to help produce the performances and to fund and install new sound and lighting in the Lorna Byrne Middle School. Chris also envisioned and raised funds for the backup power supply system for KXCJ radio in Cave Junction which keeps the station on-air to communicate vital information to the community when other communication services fail.
Chris has been the treasurer of the board of directors for the Illinois Valley Chamber of Commerce for four years and he currently holds that position.
In 2021, the Illinois Valley Soil & Water Conservation District hired Chris on contract to assess the scope of the impacts the run-away cannabis industry was having on the watershed and community. He mapped the entire Illinois Valley region to the one-foot resolution, calculated the extent of water theft, and produced a first-of-its-kind report that also included extensive market research on community sentiment. The report is here. It has been cited in a Ph.D. dissertation at UC Berkley, conferences, and even the house floor in Washington D.C. Distinguished Professor of Hydrology at OSU, John Selker, said in the press: “The gathering of the data and analysis provided in this report reflects a monumental effort, and is certainly the most impressive work I have seen from a citizen effort in addressing the complexity of crop water consumption.” The report continues to reflect ongoing concerns throughout the pacific northwest where organized crime syndicates have wreaked havoc. HB 4061, the 2022 bulk water hauling bill, and the increased staffing for enforcement of water law against thieves are both a result of this work.
Chris co-founded Water League with the existing board of directors in May 2022 to continue public engagement in water stewardship. While Water League is a new organization, all of us involved have extensive backgrounds that give Water League a presence and capacity of a much more mature organization.