Thank you for your help : )
We will utilize the /places url instead of /location – that looks like it will work just fine. And server-side clusters and/or default map pins should do nicely as well.
Do you know of a way to get the user’s current location onto the initial google map? If I turn off auto-zoom and set a zoom level (10 or 12), it seems to zoom to the center of all the pins. Unsure if you knew of a way to change the initial map center, especially if it was based on the user’s location.