Jendaline, I investigated and that was a note left by a user previously named Nuh Squeezing, would ya believe it, more than seven months ago! Neat stuff this i function turns up!
Unfortunately I accidentally picked the note up while investigating :(
I find it more likely that they're a remnant of the past than a sign of things to come. I'm not saying that with 100% certainty, but shortly after launch it was pretty apparent that housing attached to physical locations without any upkeep or other means of removing inactive players was shortsighted, didn't scale to a growing community. Didn't even scale to a shrinking community, as that just left abandoned blocks and houses all over the place with no way for them to be reoccupied.
Group hall street signs on standard streets would have the same issue. Wouldn't be long after the game went live before new players would be complaining about all the prime locations, possibly ALL the locations, being taken. And threads would go up asking for group halls to have upkeep or to be destroyed by rook attacks if inactive, etc., etc., etc.
Saucelah: I would think it would work like Home Streets. Only accessible by clicking the player or their Profile. So Group Halls would only be accessible by visiting the groups page or clicking on the group name in the sidebar, rather than being an active location in-world.
Those are remnants from the past. We had Group Halls only on the last day of Beta, just before the Reset.
It seems likely to me that if this feature is reintroduced it will be the same as Home streets, instanced. Group members will most likely either have keys or the Halls will be open like Towers. I suspect, as before, there will be a project to build the Hall and cultivate the street and/or yard.
I just hope we will eventually get Group Halls...sigh...it's been a year+, with lots of great upgrades and changes...but still love the concept of a place to meet with a smaller group of my friends, and especially with street projects gone, a place for all of us to work together to build something special...I miss having real impact in expanding the world like we had with street projects. I get they didn't scale well, but sadly the new feats which unlock entire regions don't seem to be scratching the itch to contribute to building the world...now maybe if each feat was unlocking a street (since they do pass rather quickly)...and we had them ongoing most of the time instead of irregularly...hmmm...but I digress...yes, group halls...those would be nice to see...
@ b3achy, to paraphrase things that have been said by staff on forums and in Global, group islands/halls are still coming, but when they went back to beta to rework much of the game, group locations weren't going to make sense or would need to be reworked unless they were done much later, after the changes.
Since the major changes are done, I witnessed someone in Global ask stoot about them about a month ago, and he replied something like "still coming, but no earlier than two months from now" -- so as soon as a month, and as long as imaginable. Heh.