At the corner of Kasey Court and Mount Tabor Road is this strange dwelling that I don’t recall has ever been occupied. An eight sided house. Empty. Sad.What can you tell me about that “dwelling”?

According to Fayette County property records:
Current Owner:
Tax Year 2008
Jan. 1, 2008
Owner CUNDIFF CECIL
Address 430 MT TABOR RD

The Herald-Leader wrote about the house in 1991:

DATE: Friday, July 12, 1991
ILLUSTRATION: Color Herald-Leader/Robin Tinay Sallie Councilman Joby Gastineau: Finish the house or tear it down. Color The house violates several building codes and damages property values, an official says.
SECTION: CITY/STATE
PAGE: C1
SOURCE: By Chad Carlton Herald-Leader staff writer
SPACESHIP HOUSE FACES CRASH LANDING
The spaceship is about to be zapped.

A futuristic-looking house on Mount Tabor Road will be condemned and demolished unless the owner finishes building the two-story structure where no human being has lived before, said Chuck Mallory, director of housing maintenance for Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.

The house at 430 Mount Tabor Road, which looks like a double-decker flying saucer that has landed in a neighborhood of brick ranch and two-story, vinyl- sided houses, violates several building codes and damages property values in the area, Mallory said.

Urban County Councilman Joby Gastineau, who lives nearby, pushed for legal action after hearing five years of neighbors’ complaints and seeing no progress in completing the house. “This is an eyesore,” Gastineau said. “Something has to be done.”

Cecil Cundiff of 7213 Gerber Avenue in Louisville bought the property in March 1989 for $25,000, according to property records. Since then, the yard has been mowed but no improvements have been made to the house, Gastineau said.

“We’re going to make him either finish the project or tear it down,” he said.

Cundiff will have 60 to 90 days to finish the house or risk losing it, Mallory said.

Cundiff has an unlisted home phone number and could not be reached yesterday at CSX Transportation, where he works.

The house has been the object of curiosity and derision since developer P.M. Combs started building the house in 1986. Combs said he intended it as a model home to spark innovation in building.

But Combs lost the house in a bankruptcy case, and it was sold at auction to real estate agent Clark Gross in September 1988.

Gross said he planned to finish the house and sell it. But vandals set fire to the house soon after he bought it, and Gross decided against renovation.

Today, a rough-sawn piece of plywood covers the entrance to the charcoal- gray dwelling. “No Trespassing” is scrawled in red letters on the makeshift door.

Stacks of bricks, apparently intended for the unfinished base of the house, are piled in the yard. Black plastic covers the hole where a second-story window used to be. Another of the wide, tinted windows is cracked.

Inside, two-by-fours form the skeleton of unfinished walls, and sacks of cement are stacked on the floor.

“The only thing that house is good for is a landmark,” said Charles Bolling, who lives next door with his aunt. “I can tell anybody, ‘I live next to the spaceship’ and they know where I live.”

The possibility of demolition is good news to Shirley Bauer, who lives two houses down from the spaceship house. “I’d really like to see it torn down,” she said.

Last year, Bauer and her husband, Roger, unsuccessfully tried for six months to sell their $113,000 wood-and-stone house. The spaceship house made it difficult to sell at that price, she said. They decided to stay in Lexington and instead sold a second house in Louisville. However, the strange house helped Terry Etherton, who bought one of the seven starter houses built on the court last year. “I got it for a good price because the builder was having a hard time selling houses,” he said.

Mattie Mosier, Bolling’s aunt, doesn’t mind being next door to the spaceship house. “I don’t have to sit and look at it,” she said. But Betty Lunsford does. She lives across
Mount Tabor Road from the spaceship house and is homebound because of cancer and a heart condition. “That’s a hell of a thing to have to look at all day,” she said. Both would like to see something done, but they aren’t eager to see it torn down.

Mosier is worried that some developer might build two houses on the lot, crowding a short street already packed with houses. Lunsford thinks the house should be moved instead. “Too many people need homes,” she said.

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