Sebastian Coe admitted the timeline to build Manchester United's new stadium was "slightly uncertain", but he believed it was "moving in the right direction."
Lord Coe, who oversaw London's 2012 Olympic and Paralympic bid, is chair of the Mayoral Development Corporation for the Old Trafford regeneration project.
The former IOC president previously chaired a task force set up by United owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe to look at stadium options for the club amid a wider regeneration of the surrounding area.
Coe is now playing a key part in the development of the 100,000-seater stadium, which Ratcliffe hopes will become the 'Wembley of the north.'
However, he revealed that acquiring the land needed for the project -- set to cost an estimated £2 billion ($2.7bn) -- was proving to be "complicated."
Speaking on The Sports Agents podcast, Coe said: "I love regeneration projects and I was really pleased to be asked to get involved in that.
"I do actually believe in good, locally-funded projects to make lives easier for local people. And I also saw from the London model that if you build it around sport, the multiplier impact of getting other stuff done is far quicker than it would have been.
"Land acquisition is always complicated. I know that from London, so, at this moment, it's just putting the stuff together sequentially and incrementally and using a world-class stadium to be a catalyst for so many other things, including inward investment.
"So, it's about jobs, it's about housing, it's about educational aspiration and I've seen sport so often used properly, changing local landscapes and this is an exciting project."
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As for the timescale, Coe added: "Well, again, it's slightly uncertain at the moment. The stadium is being scoped and being improperly scaled.
"But again, that is also dependent on the purchasing and the acquisition of various other parcels of land in that space.
"That's all taking place at the moment and I won't maintain a running commentary on that, but we're moving in the right direction."
