At that time, the council will have developed rules governing the establishment of a project control group the trust will set up.
Settlement of a service level agreement, and the establishment of the project control group, were the subject of one of eight conditions the council set down when it agreed to keep funding the stadium in March.
The condition said the agreement was to be signed "as soon as possible", and the control group was to be established in accordance with the agreement.
The council was to be represented on the control group by "personnel with significant experience in construction, project management and financial marketing".
Progress on the agreement has been a regular fixture on council and council committee agendas since March, but has always been discussed with the public excluded.
Deputy Mayor Syd Brown said in May he hoped it could be signed by the end of that month. Last week, council chief executive Jim Harland said the council was "very close" to an agreement with the trust.
The council had completed a document it was happy with, and the trust was looking through it.
There was no specific reason it had taken longer than expected, but there were "many interests involved", and it took time to get it right.
Cr Brown said methodology for choosing members of the project control group would be given to the trust, and the trust would set up the group after that.
The council has also been discussing, in private, the future of a venue management company.
A company that would be added to the council's group of trading organisations, and has tentatively been called Otago Venues Ltd, is expected to own and market the stadium. It would control facilities such as the town hall, the Edgar Centre, the Dunedin Ice Stadium and others, allowing the council to put all the competing venues into a management structure which would be managed to best utilise each facility.
The company would earn all the revenues and pay all the expenses of the stadium, and would contract a second new council-owned company, Dunedin Venues Management Ltd, for marketing, promotion organisation, servicing, ticketing, event management, maintenance and any other activity directly related to events in the stadium.
Mr Harland said starting the new companies would mean going through a special consultative procedure, which he expected would be done at the same time as next year's long-term council community plan. Details would be discussed by councillors when they meet to discuss the draft budget in January.
