For eight years, Shadow Pines had a house nobody used. The Town of Penfield bought the property, including the 1832 Alpheus Clark House, back in April 2018 after a public referendum, and then the building mostly just sat there. It had been a local landmark since 1986, which meant it couldn't be torn down, but landmark status doesn't come with a use plan attached. So the house waited while the town figured out what to do with it.
This June, the waiting ended. The town finished a $6 million rehab that turned the old farmhouse into the Alpheus Clark House and Lodge, a 5,800-square-foot event space with a catering kitchen, an outdoor patio, and enough seating for a real party. If you've been wondering what to do with a milestone birthday, a graduation, or a family reunion that's too big for your backyard and too impersonal for a hotel ballroom, Penfield just built you an option. The catch, and it's a small one, is that the town hadn't finished setting the price when it opened the doors.
The house that outlived its purpose, then found a new one
The Clark House was never meant to be a museum piece. It was a working farmhouse, and by the time the town took it over, the surrounding cart barn had seen better decades. The rehab project, awarded to five prime contractors back on February 5, 2025, had two jobs at once: save the parts of the original 1832 structure worth saving, and build something new next to it that the community could actually use. Christa Construction handled the work, restoring the oldest sections of the house, removing the additions that had deteriorated past saving, and building the new lodge from the ground up.
Supervisor Jeff Leenhouts broke ground on the project on May 6, 2025, calling it a chance to give Penfield "an incredible gathering space while also honoring and preserving a piece of our Town's history." The project was originally expected to wrap by early fall 2026. It finished months ahead of that, with a ribbon-cutting on June 10, 2026, led by current Town Supervisor Kevin Berry.
What you're actually renting
The lodge isn't a banquet hall dressed up to sound historic. It's a working event space with specifics, and the specifics are what make it useful. As of a May 20, 2026 town board work session, the building's inventory included:
- 14 round tables
- 140 chairs
- A prep and catering kitchen
- Indoor space plus an outdoor patio
- Exterior-accessed public restrooms, serving both the lodge and general Shadow Pines visitors
That's a real capacity number, not a marketing estimate. A hundred and forty chairs puts the Clark House Lodge in the same size range as a mid-sized wedding reception or a company holiday party, sized well above what a restaurant private room or a school cafeteria rental typically offers in town.
"We are not only adding a beautiful new event space for our community to enjoy, but, most importantly, we have preserved a piece of our community's history through the rehabilitation of the Alpheus Clark House." — Town Supervisor Kevin Berry, at the June 10 ribbon-cutting
The part the town hasn't finished yet
Here's the wrinkle worth knowing before you start planning around this place: as of that May 20 work session, the town still hadn't set what it costs to rent. Staff were waiting on the results of an active janitorial bid, with contractors preliminarily estimating $500 to $700 per cleaning, before finalizing rates. The recommendation on the table was a single resident rate with a substantially higher fee for nonresidents, a structure similar to how other county lodges price their rentals. Staff also reviewed comparable lodge rates elsewhere in the county to make sure Penfield's number lands somewhere reasonable.
None of that is unusual for a brand-new municipal facility. It just means that if you're a Penfield resident thinking about booking the space for next spring, you're watching a price get set in real time rather than looking up a published rate sheet. That's worth knowing going in, and worth calling the Supervisor's office to check on if you're planning something that far out.
You can walk through it before you ever pay for it
There's a practical way around the pricing uncertainty in the short term. The Town of Penfield's 2026 Community Health and Wellness Fair is scheduled for Friday, October 9, from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m., and it's being held at the Alpheus Clark House Lodge at 675 Whalen Road. That's less than three weeks from now. If you've been curious what the restored house and the new lodge actually look like inside, before you commit to renting it for your own event, this is the low-stakes way to see it. Walk the space, check the sight lines, see how the kitchen and patio connect, and decide for yourself whether it fits what you have in mind.
Shadow Pines isn't replacing anything, it's filling a gap that's been there a while
It's worth separating this from the other big fall fixture in town. Schutt's Apple Mill, on Plank Road, has been family-run since 1918, four generations deep, and its fall lineup hasn't changed because Shadow Pines got a new lodge. The mill's Cider Mile fun run happens November 7 this year, an off-road mile through the orchard with cider stops along the way, and the country store keeps doing what it's done for over a century: fresh cider, fried cakes made daily, and roughly thirty apple varieties at the height of the season.
The Clark House Lodge doesn't compete with that, and it shouldn't try to. Schutt's is where Penfield goes to mark the season. The Clark House Lodge is where Penfield now goes to mark an occasion, a wedding shower, a retirement party, a milestone anniversary, without driving into Rochester or renting a restaurant's back room for the night. Those are two different needs, and the town spent eight years and six million dollars closing the second one.
What this actually means if you live here
If you've lived in Penfield for a while, you've probably driven past Shadow Pines without giving the old farmhouse much thought. That's the point of this piece, not the ribbon-cutting itself, which most residents missed, but the fact that the building is now genuinely useful in a way it hasn't been in living memory. The town didn't restore a landmark just to look at it. It restored a landmark so a hundred and forty people could sit down inside it for somebody's birthday.
The rate card will land eventually, probably once the janitorial contract is finalized and utility costs get modeled out over a full season. Until then, October 9 is your easiest way to see the inside for free and decide if it's worth the wait.
Wondering how a project like this shapes what a neighborhood is worth to live in, not just what it costs to buy into? That's the kind of local detail the Bonnie Pagano Team tracks for clients moving in or around Penfield. If you're weighing a move here, or just want a local read on how the town is changing, reach out and we'll talk it through.
