Tom Kerr envisions a subterranean entertainment district -- Crystal City Underground -- with shops, restaurants, dance clubs and sporting venues inside an old sand mine.

Jim Kennedy, the man who owns the property next door, wants to use his land for an iron ore smelter.

Neither man is a fan of the other's project, staff writer Leah Thorsen reports in a story on the front page of Tuesday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch and on STLtoday.com.

Thorsen writes:

Kerr had hoped to use Kennedy's smelter site to build a hotel, marina and parking garage. As it stands now, Kerr will have to attract restaurants and dance clubs to his sand mine with an industrial operation potentially next door.

"I'd love for it not to be there, but I don't own the property and he does," Kerr said of Kennedy's plans for the smelter.

Right now, Thorsen writes, Kerr's mine houses five volleyball nets and a pole-vaulting pad used by a club. Last fall, it played host to a martial-arts cage fight. The mine is just outside Crystal City limits, about 30 miles south of St. Louis.

Kerr is pushing to get governmental approval of his plans, and hopes to have tenants in place by the end of the year. Thorsen reports that "he hopes sports also will be a big part of the complex, offering everything from skateboarding and offroad biking to venues for senior citizen competitions in shuffleboard and bowling."