One Breezy Meadows barn would convert to 24 apartments, developer proposes
by Robert Lynch; May 8, 2025
Decades ago, it sheltered Babcock Poultry Farm’s chickens. Then, for a short time, it quartered hogs. Now, if a Ulysses developer realizes his goal, one of those many, long-abandoned, 600-foot long barns within Enfield’s Breezy Meadows subdivision could be chopped into sections and converted into affordable housing, 24 units in all.
Developer Jordan Bonafede, accompanied by his attorney, Charles Wolff, brought their initial “sketch plan” to the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday, May 7th. Admittedly, Bonafede’s concept has a long way to go before it becomes reality. He said he doesn’t even yet own the land.
“We haven’t even put in an offer,” Bonafede told the Planning Board.
Enfield residents have rightful reason to be surprised that a long-dormant, 24,000-square foot, long, low-slung, former laying barn could become an apartment house. Deed covenants that the one-time farm’s initial developers, New York Land & Lakes Development, LLC, had attached to the lots it sold—and promised to the Planning Board that they would limit Breezy Meadows’ growth—were supposed to restrict each lot’s development to no more than one, single-family home and one accessory dwelling unit.
But Bonafede told the Planning Board Wednesday that the restriction doesn’t apply to the development he plans.
Bonafede said Land & Lakes allowed a “commercial use” exception to those few, big lots with the long, yellow barns. And since a multi-unit apartment complex serves a “commercial” purpose, Bonafede said, he can convert the barn into apartments and still remain within deed compliance.
“I don’t remember Land and Lakes asking us any exceptions to the lots,” Planning Board member Mike Carpenter told Bonafede. And Carpenter followed with this warning: “Any of your neighbors could sue you.”
Jordan Bonafede would buy so-called “Lot 4” at Breezy Meadows, one of 33 lots New York Land & Lakes created when in 2023 it subdivided the 337-acre former John William Kenney farm between Podunk and Halseyville Roads.
Lot 4 includes as many as three of the longer barns, plus two smaller structures, all at the southernmost side of the Breezy Meadows tract when viewed from the east side of Podunk Road.
To circumvent building code requirements that mandate that large, multiple-residential buildings have sprinkler systems, Bonafede would chop the 600-foot long barn into six sections, placing each piece under the 5,000-square foot threshold.
Each section would include four modest apartments, one- or two-bedroom dwellings, ranging from 800 to 1,200 square feet. Just by removing small sections of the existing building’s roof and walls, Bonafede would maintain the fire code’s minimum 12-foot separation between the sections.
“We need more housing,” Planning Board alternate member—and Enfield Deputy Town Supervisor—Greg Hutnik remarked. He said so even though Hutnik, like others on the Planning Board, seemed startled that the authorizations they’d granted Land & Lakes two years ago could lead to such aggressive residential development now.
Bonafede said he’s already accomplished a similar, 20-unit conversion in the Town of Covert.
“As long as you know what you’re getting into,” Planning Board Char Dan Walker cautioned the developer.
Asked what he expects to charge in monthly rent for each unit, Bonafede said he’s talking a “$1,200 price range.” It’s “affordable housing,” Bonafede acknowledged.
Several steps, important steps, remain to be taken before Bonafede’s proposed barn conversion can go forward. The Planning Board will undoubtedly demand several review sessions, along with better-detailed drawings and at least one public hearing. What the developer had readied for the Planning Board Wednesday was no more refined than penciled drawings on graph paper.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Bonafede claimed that the site’s current owner is asking $279,000 to sell the 30-acre tract. Purchase would require “six-to-eight weeks” time to complete, Bonafede estimated. After title had been secured, he’d expect to launch the approval process through the Planning Board over the next several months.
And then there’s the question of water. Water adequacy was a prime concern to neighbors when Breezy Meadows was first proposed two years ago. Planners at the time brushed aside the water-supply worry, arguing that widely-spaced homes spread out on 33 lots in a 300-plus acre subdivision provided sufficient separation to disperse groundwater demand. But putting 24 families on just one of those lots few had ever envisioned.
“We’ll have to do an evaluation of the water supply,” Board Chair Walker said during the meeting.
Afterward, Bonafede admitted he may have to install a storage tank.
The developer told planners he’d start small, segmenting and repurposing just one of the barns, the second-removed from the road of the three Bonafede would own. But he declined to dismiss the prospect of similarly renovating the nearly-identical barn he’d own nearest Podunk. The farthest one back, Bonafede said, is smaller and in worst shape. Its roof has collapsed in the middle.
“There’s no way we could afford doing the whole thing at once,” Bonafede conceded of the three-barn complex.
But monkey-see, monkey-do. Breezy Meadows has as many as thirteen of those long poultry barns scattered amidst the weeds. They’re in various states of disrepair and owned by different investors. Their owners may have other plans. But a profitable adaptive re-use by one developer could prompt copy-cat conversions by others.
Breezy Meadows may have brought to Enfield an idea that opportunists had conceived well before Town fathers (and mothers) had ever imagined it could happen. Now, it may.
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